THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  LlBKAi;> 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CAfJi 

TX)S   ANr.pr  • 


THE  WORKS   OF 

MICHEL   de    MONTAIGNE 

With  Notes,  Life  and  Letters 

Complete  in  Ten  Volumes 


EMERSON    EDITION 

Ten  Hundred  and  Fifty  Copies 
have  been  printed 


Number 


418 


ESSAYS  OF 


MONTAIGNE 


TRANSLATED  BY 

CHARLES  COTTON 

REVISED  BY 

WILLIAM  CAREW  HAZLETT 


VOLUME  TWO 


New  York 

EDWIN  C.  HILL 

MCMX 


Copyright  1910   bt 
EDWIN    C.    HILL 


CONTENTS 


College 
Library 

PQ 

tsWb 

mo 


PAGE 

Various  Events  from  the  same  Counsel 11 

Of  Pedantry 33 

Of  the  Institution  of  Children 60 

It  is  Folly  to  Refer  Truth  and  Error  to  our 

own  Capacity 142 

Of  Friendship 150 

Of  Moderation 178 

Of  Cannibals 189 

That  it  is  Meet  to  Intervene  Discreetly  in 

Judging  the  Divine  Ordinances 218 

To  Avoid  Pleasures  at  the  Expense  of  Life. ...  223 
Fortune  is  Oftentimes  met  with  in  the  Train 

of  Reason 226 

On  a  Defect  in  our  Government 233 

Of  the  Custom  of  Clothing  Oneself 235 

Of  Cato  the  Younger 243 

How  we  Cry  and  Laugh  for  the  same  Thing. .  251 


Volume  II 


1005733 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Confidant.    From  Painting  by 

Pio  Ricci Frontispiece 

The  Muses  Teaching  Cupid  to 
"Walk.  From  Painting  by  Aug- 
uste-Barthelemy-Glaize Page     114 

The  Tomb  op  Achilles.  From  Paint- 
ing by  Georges  Moreau  De  Tours        ' '         160 

Venus  and  Bellona.   From  Painting 

by  Paul  Schobelt "        254 


Volume  II 


ESSAYS  OF  MONTAIGNE 

VAEIOUS  EVENTS  FROM  THE  SAME 
COUNSEL. 

JACQUES  AMIOT,  grand  almoner  of  France, 
one  day  related  to  me  this  story,  much  to  the 
honor  of  a  prince  of  ours  (and  ours  he  was 
upon  several  very  good  accounts,  though 
originally  of  foreign  extraction),  that  in  the 
time  of  our  first  commotions,  at  the  siege  of 
Rouen,  this  prince,  having  heen  advertised 
by  the  queen-mother  of  a  conspiracy  against 
his  life,  and  in  her  letters  particular  notice 
being  given  him  of  the  person  who  was  to 
execute  the  business  (who  was  a  gentleman 
of  Anjou  or  of  Maine,  and  who  to  this  effect 
ordinarily  frequented  this  prince's  house), 
discovered  not  a  syllable  of  this  intelligence 
to  any  one  whatever;  but  going  the  next  day 
to  the  Mont  Sainte  Catherine,  from  which 
our  battery  played  against  the  town  (for  it 
was  during  the  time  of  the  siege),  and  having 
in  company  with  him  the  said  lord  almoner, 
11 


12  MONTAIGNE 

and  another  bishop,  he  saw  this  gentleman, 
who  had  been  denoted  to  him,  and  presently 
sent  for  him;  to  whom,  being  come  before 
him,  seeing  him  already  pale  and  trembling 
with  the  conscience  of  his  guilt,  he  thus  said, 
"Monsieur  such  a  one,  you  guess  what  I 
have  to  say  to  you;  your  countenance  dis- 
covers it;  'tis  in  vain  to  disguise  your  prac- 
tice, for  I  am  so  well  informed  of  your  busi- 
ness, that  it  will  but  make  worse  for  you,  to 
go  about  to  conceal  or  deny  it :  you  know  very 
well  such  and  such  passages"  (which  were 
the  most  secret  circumstances  of  his  con- 
spiracy), "and  therefore  be  sure,  as  you 
tender  your  own  life,  to  confess  to  me  the 
whole  truth  of  the  design."  The  poor  man 
seeing  himself  thus  trapped  and  convicted 
(for  the  whole  business  had  been  discovered 
to  the  queen  by  one  of  the  accomplices),  was 
in  such  a  taking,  he  knew  not  what  to  do; 
but,  folding  his  hands,  to  beg  and  sue  for 
mercy,  he  threw  himself  at  his  prince's  feet, 
who  taking  him  up,  proceeded  to  say,  "Come, 
sir;  tell  me,  have  I  at  any  time  done  you  of- 
fence? or  have  I,  through  private  hatred  or 
malice,  offended  any  kinsman  or  friend  of 


MONTAIGNE  13 

yours?  It  is  not  above  three  weeks  that  I 
have  known  you;  what  inducement,  then, 
could  move  you  to  attempt  my  death f"  To 
which  the  gentleman  with  a  trembling  voice 
replied,  "That  it  was  no  particular  grudge 
he  had  to  his  person,  but  the  general  interest 
and  concern  of  his  party,  and  that  he  had 
been  put  upon  it  by  some  who  had  per- 
suaded him  it  would  be  a  meritorious  act, 
by  any  means,  to  extirpate  so  great  and  so 
powerful  an  enemy  of  their  religion." 
"Well,"  said  the  prince,  "I  will  now  let  you 
see,  how  much  more  charitable  the  religion 
is  that  I  maintain,  than  that  which  you  pro- 
fess: yours  has  counselled  you  to  kill  me, 
without  hearing  me  speak,  and  without  ever 
having  given  you  any  cause  of  offence;  and 
mine  commands  me  to  forgive  you,  convict 
as  you  are,  by  your  own  confession,  of  a  de- 
sign to  kill  me  without  reason.  Get  you  gone ; 
let  me  see  you  no  more ;  and,  if  you  are  wise, 
choose  henceforward  honester  men  for  your 
counsellors  in  your  designs." 

The  Emperor  Augustus,  being  in  Gaul,  had 
certain  information  of  a  conspiracy  L.  Cinna 
was  contriving  against  him;  he  therefore  re- 


14  MONTAIGNE 

solved  to  make  him  an  example;  and,  to  that 
end,  sent  to  summon  his  friends  to  meet  the 
next  morning  in  counsel.  But  the  night  be- 
tween he  passed  in  great  unquietness  of  mind, 
considering  that  he  was  about  to  put  to  death 
a  young  man,  of  an  illustrious  family,  and 
nephew  to  the  great  Pompey,  and  this  made 
him  break  out  into  several  passionate  com- 
plainings. "What  then,"  said  he,  "is  it  pos- 
sible that  I  am  to  live  in  perpetual  anxiety 
and  alarm,  and  suffer  my  would-be  assassin, 
meantime,  to  walk  abroad  at  liberty?  Shall 
he  go  unpunished,  after  having  conspired 
against  my  life,  a  life  that  I  have  hitherto 
defended  in  so  many  civil  wars,  in  so  many 
battles  by  land  and  by  sea?  And  after  hav- 
ing settled  the  universal  peace  of  the  whole 
world,  shall  this  man  be  pardoned,  who  has 
conspired  not  only  to  murder,  but  to  sacrifice 
me?" — for  the  conspiracy  was  to  kill  him  at 
sacrifice.  After  which,  remaining  for  some 
time  silent,  he  began  again,  in  louder  tones, 
and  exclaimed  against  himself,  saying: 
"Why  livest  thou,  if  it  be  for  the  good  of  so 
many  that  thou  shouldst  die?  must  there  be 
no  end  of  thy  revenges  and  cruelties?    Is  thy 


MONTAIGNE  15 

life  of  so  great  value,  that  so  many  mischiefs 
must  be  done  to  preserve  it?"  His  wife 
Li  via,  seeing  him  in  this  perplexity:  "Will 
you  take  a  woman 's  counsel  T ' '  said  she.  ' '  Do 
as  the  physicians  do,  who,  when  the  ordinary 
recipes  will  do  no  good,  make  trial  of  the 
contrary.  By  severity  you  have  hitherto  pre- 
vailed nothing;  Lepidus  has  followed  Sal- 
vidienus;  Murena,  Lepidus;  Caepio,  Murena; 
Egnatius,  Caepio.  Begin  now,  and  try  how 
sweetness  and  clemency  will  succeed.  China 
is  convict;  forgive  him,  he  will  never  hence- 
forth have  the  heart  to  hurt  thee,  and  it  will 
be  an  act  to  thy  glory.' '  Augustus  was  well 
pleased  that  he  had  met  with  an  advocate  of 
his  own  humor;  wherefore,  having  thanked 
his  wife,  and,  in  the  morning,  countermanded 
his  friends  he  had  before  summoned  to  coun- 
cil, he  commanded  Cinna  all  alone  to  be 
brought  to  him;  who  being  accordingly  come, 
and  a  chair  by  his  appointment  set  him,  hav- 
ing ordered  all  the  rest  out  of  the  room,  he 
spake  to  him  after  this  manner:  "In  the 
first  place,  Cinna,  I  demand  of  thee  patient 
audience;  do  not  interrupt  me  in  what  I  am 
about  to  say,  and  I  will  afterwards  give  thee 


16  MONTAIGNE 

time  and  leisure  to  answer.  Thou  knowest, 
China,  that  having  taken  thee  prisoner  in  the 
enemy's  camp,  and  thou  an  enemy,  not  only 
so  become,  but  born  so,  I  gave  thee  thy  life, 
restored  to  thee  all  thy  goods,  and,  finally, 
put  thee  in  so  good  a  posture,  by  my  bounty, 
of  living  well  and  at  thy  ease,  that  the  vic- 
torious envied  the  conquered.  The  sacerdotal 
office  which  thou  mad  est  suit  to  me  for,  I  con- 
ferred upon  thee,  after  having  denied  it  to 
others,  whose  fathers  have  ever  borne  arms 
in  my  service.  After  so  many  obligations, 
thou  hast  undertaken  to  kill  me. ' '  At  which 
Cinna  crying  out  that  he  was  very  far  from 
entertaining  any  so  wicked  a  thought: 
"Thou  dost  not  keep  thy  promise,  Cinna,' ' 
continued  Augustus,  "that  thou  wouldst  not 
interrupt  me.  Yes,  thou  hast  undertaken  to 
murder  me  in  such  a  place,  on  such  a  day,  in 
such  and  such  company,  and  in  such  a  man- 
ner." At  which  words,  seeing  Cinna  as- 
tounded and  silent,  not  upon  the  account  of 
his  promise  so  to  be,  but  interdict  with  the 
weight  of  his  conscience:  "Why,"  pro- 
ceeded Augustus,  "to  what  end  wouldst  thou 
do  it?    Is  it  to  be  emperor?    Believe  me,  the 


MONTAIGNE  17 

Republic  is  in  very  ill  condition,  if  I  am  the 
only  man  betwixt  thee  and  the  empire.  Thon 
art  not  able  so  much  as  to  defend  thy  own 
house,  and  but  t'other  day  was  baffled  in  a 
suit,  by  the  opposed  interest  of  a  mere 
manumitted  slave.  What,  hast  thou  neither 
means  nor  power  in  any  other  thing,  but  only 
to  undertake  Caesar?  I  quit  the  throne,  if 
there  be  no  other  than  I  to  obstruct  thy  hopes. 
Canst  thou  believe  that  Paulus,  that  Fabius, 
that  the  Cossii  and  the  Servilii,  and  so  many 
noble  Romans,  not  only  so  in  title,  but  who 
by  their  virtue  honor  their  nobility,  would 
suffer  or  endure  thee?"  After  this,  and  a 
great  deal  more  that  he  said  to  him  (for  he 
was  two  long  hours  in  speaking),  "Now  go, 
Cinna,  go  thy  way:  I  give  thee  that  life  as 
traitor  and  parricide,  which  I  before  gave 
thee  in  the  quality  of  an  enemy.  Let  friend- 
ship from  this  time  forward  begin  betwixt  us, 
and  let  us  show  whether  I  have  given,  or  thou 
hast  received  thy  life  with  the  better  faith;" 
and  so  departed  from  him.  Some  time  after, 
he  preferred  him  to  the  consular  dignity, 
complaining  that  he  had  not  the  confidence  to 
demand  it;  had  him  ever  after  for  his  very 


18  MONTAIGNE 

great  friend,  and  was,  at  last,  made  by  him 
sole  heir  to  all  his  estate.  Now,  from  the  time 
of  this  accident  which  befell  Augustus  in  the 
fortieth  year  of  his  age,  he  never  had  any 
conspiracy  or  attempt  against  him,  and  so 
reaped  the  due  reward  of  this  his  so  gener- 
ous clemency.  But  it  did  not  so  happen  with 
our  prince,  his  moderation  and  mercy  not  so 
securing  him,  but  that  he  afterwards  fell  into 
the  toils  of  the  like  treason,  so  vain  and 
futile  a  thing  is  human  prudence;  through- 
out all  our  projects,  counsels  and  precau- 
tions, Fortune  will  still  be  mistress  of  events. 
We  repute  physicians  fortunate  when  they 
hit  upon  a  lucky  cure,  as  if  there  was  no  other 
art  but  theirs  that  could  not  stand  upon  its 
own  legs,  and  whose  foundations  are  too 
weak  to  support  itself  upon  its  own  basis; 
as  if  no  other  art  stood  in  need  of  Fortune's 
hand  to  help  it.  For  my  part,  I  think  of 
physic  as  much  good  or  ill  as  any  one  would 
have  me:  for,  thanks  be  to  God,  we  have  no 
traffic  together.  I  am  of  a  quite  contrary 
humor  to  other  men,  for  I  always  despise 
it;  but  when  I  am  sick,  instead  of  recanting, 
or  entering  into  composition  with  it,  I  begin, 


MONTAIGNE  19 

moreover,  to  hate  and  fear  it,  telling  them 
who  importune  me  to  take  physic,  that  at  all 
events  they  must  give  me  time  to  recover  my 
strength  and  health,  that  I  may  be  the  bet- 
ter able  to  support  and  encounter  the  violence 
and  danger  of  their  potions.  I  let  nature 
work,  supposing  her  to  be  sufficiently  armed 
with  teeth  and  claws  to  defend  herself  from 
the  assaults  of  infirmity,  and  to  uphold  that 
contexture,  the  dissolution  of  which  she  flies 
and  abhors.  I  am  afraid,  lest,  instead  of  as- 
sisting her  when  close  grappled  and  strug- 
gling with  disease,  I  should  assist  her  ad- 
versary, and  burden  her  still  more  with  work 
to  do. 

Now,  I  say,  that  not  in  physic  only,  but  in 
other  more  certain  arts,  fortune  has  a  very 
great  part.  The  poetic  raptures,  the  flights 
of  fancy,  that  ravish  and  transport  the  author 
out  of  himself,  why  should  we  not  attribute 
them  to  his  good  fortune,  since  he  himself 
confesses  that  they  exceed  his  sufficiency  and 
force,  and  acknowledges  them  to  proceed 
from  something  else  than  himself,  and  that 
he  has  them  no  more  in  his  power  than  the 
orators  say  they  have  those  extraordinary 


20  MONTAIGNE 

motions  and  agitations  that  sometimes  pnsh 
them  beyond  their  design.  It  is  the  same  in 
painting,  where  touches  shall  sometimes  slip 
from  the  hand  of  the  painter,  so  surpassing 
both  his  conception  and  his  art,  as  to  beget 
his  own  admiration  and  astonishment.  But 
Fortune  does  yet  more  evidently  manifest  the 
share  she  has  in  all  things  of  this  kind,  by 
the  graces  and  elegances  we  find  in  them,  not 
only  beyond  the  intention,  but  even  without 
the  knowledge  of  the  workman:  a  competent 
reader  often  discovers  in  other  men's  writ- 
ings other  perfections  than  the  author  him- 
self either  intended  or  perceived,  a  richer 
sense  and  more  quaint  expression. 

As  to  military  enterprises,  every  one  sees 
how  great  a  hand  Fortune  has  in  them.  Even 
in  our  counsels  and  deliberations  there  must, 
certainly,  be  something  of  chance  and  good- 
luck  mixed  with  human  prudence;  for  all  that 
our  wisdom  can  do  alone  is  no  great  matter; 
the  more  piercing,  quick,  and  apprehensive 
it  is,  the  weaker  it  finds  itself,  and  is  by  so 
much  more  apt  to  mistrust  itself.  I  am  of 
Sylla's  opinion: — 


MONTAIGNE  21 

"Who  freed  his  great  deeds  from  envy  by 
ever  attributing  them  to  his  good  fortune, 
and  finally  by  surnaming  himself  Faustus, 
the  Lucky;" 

and  when  I  closely  examine  the  most  glorious 
exploits  of  war,  I  perceive,  methinks,  that 
those  who  carry  them  on  make  use  of  coun- 
sel and  debate  only  for  custom's  sake,  and 
leave  the  best  part  of  the  enterprise  to  For- 
tune, and  relying  upon  her  aid,  transgress,  at 
every  turn,  the  bounds  of  military  conduct 
and  the  rules  of  war.  There  happen,  some- 
times, fortuitous  alacrities  and  strange  furies 
in  their  deliberations,  that  for  the  most  part 
prompt  them  to  follow  the  worst  grounded 
counsels,  and  swell  their  courage  beyond  the 
limits  of  reason.  Whence  it  happened  that 
several  of  the  great  captains  of  old,  to  justify 
those  rash  resolutions,  have  been  fain  to  tell 
their  soldiers  that  they  were  invited  to  such 
attempts  by  some  inspiration,  some  sign  and 
prognostic. 

Wherefore,  in  this  doubt  and  uncertainty, 
that  the  shortsightedness  of  human  wisdom 
to  see  and  choose  the  best  (by  reason  of  the 
difficulties  that  the  various  accidents  and 


22  MONTAIGNE 

circumstances  of  things  bring  along  with 
them)  perplexes  ns  withal,  the  surest  way, 
in  my  opinion,  did  no  other  consideration  in- 
vite ns  to  it,  is  to  pitch  upon  that  wherein  is 
the  greatest  appearance  of  honesty  and  jus- 
tice; and  not,  being  certain  of  the  shortest, 
to  keep  the  straightest  and  most  direct  way; 
as  in  the  two  examples  I  have  just  given, 
there  is  no  question  but  it  was  more  noble 
and  generous  in  him  who  had  received  the 
offence,  to  pardon  it,  than  to  do  otherwise. 
If  the  former  miscarried  in  it,  he  is  not, 
nevertheless,  to  be  blamed  for  his  good  inten- 
tion; neither  does  any  one  know  if  he  had 
proceeded  otherwise,  whether  by  that  means 
he  had  avoided  the  end  his  destiny  had  ap- 
pointed for  him;  and  he  had,  moreover,  lost 
the  glory  of  so  humane  an  act. 

You  will  read  in  history,  of  many  who  have 
been  in  such  apprehension,  that  the  most  part 
have  taken  the  course  to  meet  and  anticipate 
conspiracies  against  them  by  punishment  and 
revenge;  but  I  find  very  few  who  have  reaped 
any  advantage  by  this  proceeding;  witness 
so  many  Eoman  emperors.  Whoever  finds 
himself  in  this  danger,  ought  not  to  expect 


MONTAIGNE  23 

much  either  from  his  vigilance  or  power;  for 
how  hard  a  thing  is  it  for  a  man  to  secure 
himself  from  an  enemy,  who  lies  concealed 
under  the  countenance  of  the  most  assiduous 
friend  we  have,  and  to  discover  and  know  the 
wills  and  inward  thoughts  of  those  who  are 
in  our  personal  service.  'Tis  to  much  pur- 
pose to  have  a  guard  of  foreigners  about  one, 
and  to  be  always  fenced  about  with  a  pale 
of  armed  men;  whosoever  despises  his  own 
life,  is  always  master  of  that  of  another  man. 
And  moreover,  this  continual  suspicion,  that 
makes  a  prince  jealous  of  all  the  world,  must 
of  necessity  be  a  strange  torment  to  him. 
Therefore  it  was,  that  Dion,  being  advertised 
that  Callippus  watched  all  opportunities  to 
take  away  his  life,  had  never  the  heart  to  in- 
quire more  particularly  into  it,  saying,  that 
he  had  rather  die  than  live  in  that  misery, 
that  he  must  continually  stand  upon  his 
guard,  not  only  against  his  enemies,  but  his 
friends  also;  which  Alexander  much  more 
vividly  and  more  roundly  manifested  in  ef- 
fect, when,  having  notice  by  a  letter  from 
Parmenio,  that  Philip,  his  most  beloved  phy- 
sician, was  by  Darius'  money  corrupted  to 


24  MONTAIGNE 

poison  him,  at  the  same  time  that  he  gave 
the  letter  to  Philip  to  read,  drank  off  the 
potion  he  had  brought  him.  Was  not  this 
to  express  a  resolution,  that  if  his  friends  had 
a  mind  to  despatch  him  out  of  the  world,  he 
was  willing  to  give  them  opportunity  to  do 
it?  This  prince,  is,  indeed,  the  sovereign 
pattern  of  hazardous  actions;  but  I  do  not 
know  whether  there  be  another  passage  in 
his  life  wherein  there  is  so  much  firm  cour- 
age as  in  this,  nor  so  illustrious  an  image  of 
the  beauty  and  greatness  of  his  mind. 

Those  who  preach  to  princes  so  circum- 
spect and  vigilant  a  jealousy  and  distrust, 
under  color  of  security,  preach  to  them  ruin 
and  dishonor:  nothing  noble  can  be  per- 
formed without  danger.  I  know  a  person, 
naturally  of  a  very  great  daring  and  enter- 
prising courage,  whose  good  fortune  is  con- 
tinually marred  by  such  persuasions,  that  he 
keep  himself  close  surrounded  by  his  friends, 
that  he  must  not  hearken  to  any  reconcilia- 
tion with  his  ancient  enemies,  that  he  must 
stand  aloof,  and  not  trust  his  person  in  hands 
stronger  than  his  own,  what  promises  or 
offers  soever  they  may  make  him,  or  what 


MONTAIGNE  25 

advantages  soever  he  may  see  before  him. 
And  I  know  another,  who  has  unexpectedly 
advanced  his  fortunes  by  following  a  clear 
contrary  advice. 

Courage,  the  reputation  and  glory  of  which 
men  seek  with  so  greedy  an  appetite,  presents 
itself,  when  need  requires,  as  magnificently 
in  cuerpo,  as  in  full  armor;  in  a  closet,  as  in 
a  camp;  with  arms  pendant,  as  with  arms 
raised. 

This  over-circumspect  and  wary  prudence 
is  a  mortal  enemy  to  all  high  and  generous 
exploits.  Scipio,  to  sound  Syphax's  inten- 
tion, leaving  his  army,  abandoning  Spain,  not 
yet  secure  nor  well  settled  in  his  new  con- 
quest, could  pass  over  into  Africa  in  two 
small  ships,  to  commit  himself,  in  an  enemy's 
country,  to  the  power  of  a  barbarian  king,  to 
a  faith  untried  and  unknown,  without  obliga- 
tion, without  hostage,  under  the  sole  security 
of  the  grandeur  of  his  own  courage,  his  good 
fortune,  and  the  promise  of  his  high  hopes: — 

"Faith  reposed  generally  binds  faith.' ■ 

In  a  life  of  ambition  and  glory,  it  is  necessary 


26  MONTAIGNE 

to  hold  a  stiff  rein  upon  suspicion:  fear  and 
distrust  invite  and  draw  on  offence.  The 
most  mistrustful  of  our  kings  established 
his  affairs  principally  by  voluntarily  com- 
mitting his  life  and  liberty  into  his  enemies' 
hands,  by  that  action  manifesting  that  he  had 
absolute  confidence  in  them,  to  the  end  they 
might  repose  as  great  an  assurance  in  him. 
Caesar  only  opposed  the  authority  of  his 
countenance  and  the  haughty  sharpness  of  his 
rebukes  to  his  mutinous  legions  in  arms 
against  him: — 

"He  stood  on  a  mound  of  banked-up  turf, 
his  countenance  intrepid,  and  made  himself 
feared,  he  fearing  nothing. ' ' 

But  it  is  true,  withal,  that  this  undaunted 
assurance  is  not  to  be  represented  in  its  sim- 
ple and  entire  form,  but  by  such  whom  the 
apprehension  of  death,  and  the  worst  that 
can  happen,  does  not  terrify  and  affright; 
for  to  represent  a  pretended  resolution  with 
a  pale  and  doubtful  countenance  and  tremb- 
ling limbs,  for  the  service  of  an  important 
reconciliation,  will  effect  nothing  to  purpose. 
'Tis  an  excellent  way  to  gain  the  heart  and 


MONTAIGNE  27 

will  of  another,  to  submit  and  intrust  one's 
self  to  him,  provided  it  appear  to  be  freely 
done,  and  without  the  constraint  of  necessity, 
and  in  such  a  condition,  that  a  man  mani- 
festly does  it  out  of  a  pure  and  entire  con- 
fidence in  the  party,  at  least,  with  a  counte- 
nance clear  from  any  cloud  of  suspicion.  I 
saw,  when  I  was  a  boy,  a  gentleman,  who  was 
governor  of  a  great  city,  upon  occasion  of 
a  popular  commotion  and  fury,  not  knowing 
what  other  course  to  take,  go  out  of  a  place 
of  very  great  strength  and  security,  and  com- 
mit himself  to  the  mercy  of  the  seditious 
rabble,  in  hopes  by  that  means  to  appease  the 
tumult  before  it  grew  to  a  more  formidable 
head;  but  it  was  ill  for  him  that  he  did  so, 
for  he  was  there  miserably  slain.  But  I  am 
not,  nevertheless,  of  opinion,  that  he  com- 
mitted so  great  an  error  in  going  out,  as  men 
commonly  reproach  his  memory  withal,  as 
he  did  in  choosing  a  gentle  and  submissive 
way  for  the  effecting  his  purpose,  and  in  en- 
deavoring to  quiet  this  storm,  rather  by 
obeying  than  commanding,  and  by  entreaty 
rather  than  remonstrance;  and  I  am  inclined 
to  believe,  that  a  gracious  severity,  with  a 


28  MONTAIGNE 

soldier-like  way  of  commanding,  full  of 
security  and  confidence,  suitable  to  the 
quality  of  his  person,  and  the  dignity  of  his 
command,  would  have  succeeded  better  with 
him;  at  least,  he  had  perished  with  greater 
decency  and  reputation.  There  is  nothing  so 
little  to  be  expected  or  hoped  for  from  this 
many-headed  monster,  in  its  fury,  as  human- 
ity and  good  nature;  it  is  much  more  capable 
of  reverence  and  fear.  I  should  also  reproach 
him,  that  having  taken  a  resolution  (in  my 
judgment  rather  brave  than  rash)  to  expose 
himself,  weak  and  naked,  in  this  tempestuous 
sea  of  enraged  madmen,  he  ought  to  have 
stuck  to  his  text,  and  not  for  an  instant  to 
have  abandoned  the  high  part  he  had  under- 
taken; whereas,  coming  to  discover  his  dan- 
ger nearer  hand,  and  his  nose  happening  to 
bleed,  he  again  changed  that  demiss  and 
fawning  countenance  he  had  at  first  put  on, 
into  another  of  fear  and  amazement,  filling 
his  voice  with  entreaties  and  his  eyes  with 
tears,  and,  endeavoring  so  to  withdraw  and 
secure  his  person,  that  carriage  more  inflamed 
their  fury,  and  soon  brought  the  effects  of  it 
upon  him. 


MONTAIGNE  29 

It  was  upon  a  time  intended  that  there 
should  be  a  general  muster  of  several  troops 
in  arms  (and  that  is  the  most  proper  occasion 
of  secret  revenges,  and  there  is  no  place 
where  they  can  be  executed  with  greater 
safety),  and  there  were  public  and  manifest 
appearances,  that  there  was  no  safe  coming 
for  some,  whose  principal  and  necessary  office 
it  was  to  review  them.  Whereupon  a  con- 
sultation was  held,  and  several  counsels  were 
proposed,  as  in  a  case  that  was  very  nice  and 
of  great  difficulty;  and  moreover  of  grave 
consequence.  Mine,  amongst  the  rest,  was, 
that  they  should  by  all  means  avoid  giving 
any  sign  of  suspicion,  but  that  the  officers 
who  were  most  in  danger  should  boldly  go, 
and  with  cheerful  and  erect  countenances  ride 
boldly  and  confidently  through  the  ranks,  and 
that  instead  of  sparing  fire  (which  the  coun- 
sels of  the  major  part  tended  to)  they  should 
entreat  the  captains  to  command  the  soldiers 
to  give  round  and  full  volleys  in  honor  of 
the  spectators,  and  not  to  spare  their  powder. 
This  was  accordingly  done,  and  served  so 
good  use,  as  to  please  and  gratify  the  sus- 
pected troops,  and  thenceforward  to  beget  a 


30  MONTAIGNE 

mutual  and  wholesome  confidence  and  intelli- 
gence amongst  them. 

I  look  upon  Julius  Caesar's  way  of  winning 
men  to  him  as  the  best  and  finest  that  can 
be  put  in  practice.  First,  he  tried  by  clem- 
ency to  make  himself  beloved  even  by  his 
very  enemies,  contenting  himself,  in  detected 
conspiracies,  only  publicly  to  declare,  that 
he  was  pre-acquainted  with  them;  which  be- 
ing done,  he  took  a  noble  resolution  to  await 
without  solicitude  or  fear,  whatever  might 
be  the  event,  wholly  resigning  himself  to  the 
protection  of  the  gods  and  fortune :  for,  ques- 
tionless, in  this  state  he  was  at  the  time  when 
he  was  killed. 

A  stranger  having  publicly  said,  that  he 
could  teach  Dionysius,  the  tyrant  of  Syracuse, 
an  infallible  way  to  find  out  and  discover  all 
the  conspiracies  his  subjects  could  contrive 
against  him,  if  he  would  give  him  a  good  sum 
of  money  for  his  pains,  Dionysius  hearing  of 
it,  caused  the  man  to  be  brought  to  him,  that 
he  might  learn  an  art  so  necessary  to  his 
preservation.  The  man  made  answer,  that 
all  the  art  he  knew,  was,  that  he  should  give 
him  a  talent,  and  afterwards  boast  that  he 


MONTAIGNE  31 

had  obtained  a  singular  secret  from  him. 
Dionysius  liked  the  invention,  and  accord- 
ingly caused  six  hundred  crowns  to  be 
counted  out  to  him.  It  was  not  likely  he 
should  give  so  great  a  sum  to  a  person  un- 
known, but  upon  the  account  of  some  ex- 
traordinary discovery,  and  the  belief  of  this 
served  to  keep  his  enemies  in  awe.  Princes, 
however,  do  wisely  to  publish  the  informa- 
tions they  receive  of  all  the  practices  against 
their  lives,  to  possess  men  with  an  opinion 
they  have  so  good  intelligence  that  nothing 
can  be  plotted  against  them,  but  they  have 
present  notice  of  it.  The  Duke  of  Athens  did 
a  great  many  foolish  things  in  the  establish- 
ment of  his  new  tyranny  over  Florence:  but 
this  especially  was  most  notable,  that  having 
received  the  first  intimation  of  the  con- 
spiracies the  people  were  hatching  against 
him,  from  Matteo  di  Morozzo,  one  of  the  con- 
spirators, he  presently  put  him  to  death,  to 
suppress  that  rumor,  that  it  might  not  be 
thought  any  of  the  city  disliked  his  govern- 
ment. 

I  remember  I  have  formerly  read  a  story 
of  some  Eoman  of  great  quality  who,  flying 


32  MONTAIGNE 

the  tyranny  of  the  Triumvirate,  had  a 
thousand  times  by  the  subtlety  of  as  many  in- 
ventions escaped  from  falling  into  the  hands 
of  those  that  pursued  him.  It  happened  one 
day  that  a  troop  of  horse,  which  was  sent  out 
to  take  him,  passed  close  by  a  brake  where 
he  was  squat,  and  missed  very  narrowly  of 
spying  him:  but  he  considering,  at  this  point, 
the  pains  and  difficulties  wherein  he  had  so 
long  continued  to  evade  the  strict  and  in- 
cessant searches  that  were  every  day  made 
for  him,  the  little  pleasure  he  could  hope  for 
in  such  a  kind  of  life,  and  how  much  better 
it  was  for  him  to  die  once  for  all,  than  to  be 
perpetually  at  this  pass,  he  started  from  his 
seat,  called  them  back,  showed  them  his  form, 
and  voluntarily  delivered  himself  up  to  their 
cruelty,  by  that  means  to  free  both  himself 
and  them  from  further  trouble.  To  invite  a 
man's  enemies  to  come  and  cut  his  throat, 
seems  a  resolution  a  little  extravagant  and 
odd;  and  yet  I  think  he  did  better  to  take 
that  course,  than  to  live  in  continual  feverish 
fear  of  an  accident  for  which  there  was  no 
cure.  But  seeing  all  the  remedies  a  man  can 
apply  to  such  a  disease,  are  full  of  unquiet- 


MONTAIGNE  33 

ness  and  uncertainty,  'tis  better  with  a  manly 
conrage  to  prepare  one's  self  for  the  worst 
that  can  happen,  and  to  extract  some  consola- 
tion from  this,  that  we  are  not  certain  the 
thing  we  fear  will  ever  come  to  pass. 

OF  PEDANTRY 

I  WAS  often,  when  a  boy,  wonderfully  con- 
cerned to  see,  in  the  Italian  farces,  a  pedant 
always  brought  in  for  the  fool  of  the  play, 
and  that  the  title  of  Magister  was  in  no 
greater  reverence  amongst  us:  for  being  de- 
livered up  to  their  tuition,  what  could  I  do 
less  than  be  jealous  of  their  honor  and  repu- 
tation? I  sought  indeed  to  excuse  them  by 
the  natural  incompatibility  betwixt  the  vul- 
gar sort  and  men  of  a  finer  thread,  both  in 
judgment  and  knowledge,  forasmuch  as  they 
go  a  quite  contrary  way  to  one  another:  but 
in  this,  the  thing  I  most  stumbled  at  was,  that 
the  finest  gentlemen  were  those  who  most 
despised  them;  witness  our  famous  poet  Du 
Bellay— 

"But  above  all  things  I  hate  pedantic  learn- 
in*." 


34  MONTAIGNE 

And  'twas  so  in  former  times;  for  Plutarch 
says  that  Greek  and  Scholar  were  terms  of 
reproach  and  contempt  amongst  the  Romans. 
But  since,  with  the  better  experience  of  age, 
I  find  they  had  very  great  reason  so  to  do, 
and  that — 

"The  greatest  clerks  are  not  the  wisest 
men." 

But  whence  it  should  come  to  pass,  that  a 
mind  enriched  with  the  knowledge  of  so 
many  things  should  not  become  more  quick 
and  sprightly,  and  that  a  gross  and  vulgar 
understanding  should  lodge  within  it,  with- 
out correcting  and  improving  itself,  all  the 
discourses  and  judgments  of  the  greatest 
minds  the  world  ever  had,  I  am  yet  to  seek. 
To  admit  so  many  foreign  conceptions,  so 
great,  and  so  high  fancies,  it  is  necessary  (as 
a  young  lady,  one  of  the  greatest  princesses 
of  the  kingdom,  said  to  me  once,  speaking  of 
a  certain  person)  that  a  man's  own  brain 
must  be  crowded  and  squeezed  together  into 
a  less  compass,  to  make  room  for  the  others; 
I  should  be  apt  to  conclude,  that  as  plants  are 
suffocated  and  drowned  with  too  much  nour- 


MONTAIGNE  35 

ishment,  and  lamps  with  too  much  oil,  so  with 
too  much  study  and  matter  is  the  active  part 
of  the  understanding  which,  being  embar- 
rassed, and  confounded  with  a  great  diversity 
of  things,  loses  the  force  and  power  to  dis- 
engage itself,  and  by  the  pressure  of  this 
weight,  is  bowed,  subjected,  and  doubled  up. 
But  it  is  quite  otherwise;  for  our  soul 
stretches  and  dilates  itself  proportionably  as 
it  fills;  and  in  the  examples  of  elder  times,  we 
see,  quite  contrary,  men  very  proper  for  pub- 
lic business,  great  captains,  and  great  states- 
men very  learned  withal. 

And,  as  to  the  philosophers,  a  sort  of  men 
remote  from  all  public  affairs,  they  have  been 
sometimes  also  despised  by  the  comic  liberty 
of  their  times;  their  opinions  and  manners 
making  them  appear,  to  men  of  another  sort, 
ridiculous.  Would  you  make  them  judges  of 
a  lawsuit,  of  the  actions  of  men?  they  are 
ready  to  take  it  upon  them,  and  straight  begin 
to  examine  if  there  be  life,  if  there  be  motion, 
if  man  be  any  other  than  an  ox;  what  it  is  to 
do  and  to  suffer?  what  animals  law  and 
justice  are!  Do  they  speak  of  the  magis- 
trates, or  to  him,  'tis  with  a  rude,  irreverent, 


36  MONTAIGNE 

and  indecent  liberty.  Do  they  hear  their 
prince,  or  a  king  commended?  they  make  no 
more  of  him,  than  of  a  shepherd,  goatherd, 
or  neatherd:  a  lazy  Condon,  occupied  in 
milking  and  shearing  his  herds  and  flocks, 
bnt  more  rudely  and  harshly  than  the  herd 
or  shepherd  himself.  Do  you  repute  any  man 
the  greater  for  being  lord  of  two  thousand 
acres  of  land?  they  laugh  at  such  a  pitiful 
pittance,  as  laying  claim  themselves  to  the 
whole  world  for  their  possession.  Do  you 
boast  of  your  nobility,  as  being  descended 
from  seven  rich  successive  ancestors?  they 
look  upon  you  with  an  eye  of  contempt,  as 
men  who  have  not  a  right  idea  of  the  uni- 
versal image  of  nature,  and  that  do  not  con- 
sider how  many  predecessors  every  one  of 
us  has  had,  rich,  poor,  kings,  slaves,  Greeks, 
and  barbarians;  and  though  you  were  the 
fiftieth  descendant  from  Hercules,  they  look 
upon  it  as  a  great  vanity,  so  highly  to  value 
this,  which  is  only  a  gift  of  fortune.  And 
'twas  so  the  vulgar  sort  contemned  them, 
as  men  ignorant  of  the  most  elementary  and 
ordinary  things;  as  presumptuous  and  in- 
solent. 


MONTAIGNE  37 

But  this  Platonic  picture  is  far  different 
from  that  these  pedants  are  presented  by. 
Those  were  envied  for  raising  themselves 
above  the  common  sort,  for  despising  the 
ordinary  actions  and  offices  of  life,  for  having 
assumed  a  particular  and  inimitable  way  of 
living,  and  for  using  a  certain  method  of 
high-flight  and  obsolete  language,  quite  dif- 
ferent from  the  ordinary  way  of  speaking: 
but  these  are  contemned  as  being  as  much  be- 
low the  usual  form,  as  incapable  of  public 
employment,  as  leading  a  life  and  conform- 
ing themselves  to  the  mean  and  vile  manners 
of  the  vulgar: — 

"I  hate  idle  works,  philosophical  utter- 
ances.1' 

For  what  concerns  the  philosophers,  as  I 
have  said,  if  they  were  great  in  science,  they 
were  yet  much  greater  in  action.  And,  as  it 
is  said  of  the  geometrician  of  Syracuse,  who 
having  been  disturbed  from  his  contempla- 
tion, to  put  some  of  his  skill  in  practice  for 
the  defence  of  his  country,  that  he  suddenly 
set  on  foot  dreadful  and  prodigious  engines, 
that  wrought  effects  beyond  all  human  ex- 


38  MONTAIGNE 

pectation;  himself,  notwithstanding,  disdain- 
ing all  this  handiwork,  and  thinking  in  this 
he  had  played  the  mere  mechanic,  and  vio- 
lated the  dignity  of  his  art,  of  which  these 
performances  of  his  he  accounted  but  trivial 
experiments  and  playthings:  so  they,  when- 
ever they  have  been  put  upon  the  proof  of 
action,  have  been  seen  to  fly  to  so  high  a 
pitch,  as  made  it  very  well  appear,  their  souls 
were  marvellously  elevated,  and  enriched  by 
the  knowledge  of  things.  But  some  of  them, 
seeing  the  reins  of  government  in  the  hands 
of  incapable  men,  have  avoided  all  manage- 
ment of  political  affairs ;  and  he  who  demand- 
ed of  Crates,  how  long  it  was  necessary  to 
philosophize,  received  this  answer:  "Till  our 
armies  are  no  more  commanded  by  fools." 
Heraclitus  resigned  the  royalty  to  his  brother, 
and,  to  the  Ephesians,  who  reproached 
him  that  he  spent  his  time  in  playing  with 
children  before  the  temple:  "Is  it  not  bet- 
ter," said  he,  "to  do  so,  than  to  sit  at  the 
helm  of  affairs  in  your  company!"  Others 
having  their  imagination  advanced  above  the 
world  and  fortune,  have  looked  upon  the 
tribunals  of  justice,  and  even  the  thrones  of 


MONTAIGNE  39 

kings,  as  paltry  and  contemptible;  insomuch, 
that  Empedocles  refused  the  royalty  that  the 
Agrigentines  offered  to  him.  Thales,  once 
inveighing  in  discourse  against  the  pains  and 
care  men  put  themselves  to  to  become  rich, 
was  answered  by  one  in  the  company,  that 
he  did  like  the  fox,  who  found  fault  with  what 
he  could  not  obtain.  Whereupon,  he  had  a 
mind,  for  the  jest's  sake,  to  show  them  to  the 
contrary;  and  having,  for  this  occasion,  made 
a  muster  of  all  his  wits,  wholly  to  employ 
them  in  the  service  of  profit  and  gain,  he  set 
a  traffic  on  foot,  which  in  one  year  brought 
him  in  so  great  riches,  that  the  most  ex- 
perienced in  that  trade  could  hardly  in  their 
whole  lives,  with  all  their  industry,  have 
raked  so  much  together.  That  which  Aris- 
totle reports  of  some  who  called  both  him  and 
Anaxagoras,  and  others  of  their  profession, 
wise  but  not  prudent,  in  not  applying  their 
study  to  more  profitable  things — though  I 
do  not  well  digest  this  verbal  distinction — 
that  will  not,  however,  serve  to  excuse  my 
pedants,  for  to  see  the  low  and  necessitous 
fortune  wherewith  they  are  content,  we  have 
rather  reason  to  pronounce  that  they  are 
neither  wise  nor  prudent. 


40  MONTAIGNE 

But  letting  this  first  reason  alone,  I  think 
it  better  to  say,  that  this  evil  proceeds  from 
their  applying  themselves  the  wrong  way  to 
the  study  of  the  sciences;  and  that,  after  the 
manner  we  are  instructed,  it  is  no  wonder  if 
neither  the  scholars  nor  the  masters  become, 
though  more  learned,  ever  the  wiser,  or  more 
able.  In  plain  truth,  the  cares  and  expense 
our  parents  are  at  in  our  education,  point  at 
nothing,  but  to  furnish  our  heads  with  knowl- 
edge; but  not  a  word  of  judgment  and  virtue. 
Cry  out,  of  one  that  passes  by,  to  the  people: 
"0,  what  a  learned  man!"  and  of  another, 
"0,  what  a  good  man!"  they  will  not  fail  to 
turn  their  eyes,  and  address  their  respect  to 
the  former.  There  should  then  be  a  third 
crier,  "0,  the  blockheads!"  Men  are  apt 
presently  to  inquire,  does  such  a  one  under- 
stand Greek  or  Latin!  Is  he  a  poet?  or  does 
he  write  in  prose  f  But  whether  he  be  grown 
better  or  more  discreet,  which  are  qualities 
of  principal  concern,  these  are  never  thought 
of.  "We  should  rather  examine,  who  is  better 
learned,  than  who  is  more  learned. 

We  only  labor  to  stuff  the  memory,  and 
leave  the  conscience  and  the  understanding 


MONTAIGNE  41 

unfurnished  and  void.  Like  birds  who  fly 
abroad  to  forage  for  grain,  and  bring  it  home 
in  the  beak,  without  tasting  it  themselves,  to 
feed  their  young;  so  our  pedants  go  picking 
knowledge  here  and  there,  out  of  books,  and 
hold  it  at  the  tongue's  end,  only  to  spit  it  out 
and  distribute  it  abroad.  And  here  I  cannot 
but  smile  to  think  how  I  have  paid  myself 
in  showing  the  foppery  of  this  kind  of  learn- 
ing, who  myself  am  so  manifest  an  example; 
for,  do  I  not  the  same  thing  throughout 
almost  this  whole  composition?  I  go  here 
and  there,  culling  out  of  several  books  the 
sentences  that  best  please  me,  not  to  keep 
them  (for  I  have  no  memory  to  retain  them 
in),  but  to  transplant  them  into  this;  where, 
to  say  the  truth,  they  are  no  more  mine  than 
in  their  first  places.  "We  are,  I  conceive, 
knowing  only  in  present  knowledge,  and  not 
at  all  in  what  is  past,  no  more  than  in  that 
which  is  to  come.  But  the  worst  on't  is,  their 
scholars  and  pupils  are  no  better  nourished 
by  this  kind  of  inspiration;  and  it  makes  no 
deeper  impression  upon  them,  but  passes 
from  hand  to  hand,  only  to  make  a  show  to  be 
tolerable  company,  and  to  tell  pretty  stories, 


42  MONTAIGNE 

like  a  counterfeit  coin  in  counters,  of  no  other 
use  or  value,  but  to  reckon  with,  or  to  set  up 
at  cards : — 

1 '  They  have  learned  to  speak  among  others, 
not  with  themselves.' ' 

"We  have  not  to  talk,  but  to  govern." 

Nature,  to  show  that  there  is  nothing  bar- 
barous where  she  has  the  sole  conduct,  often- 
times, in  nations  where  art  has  the  least  to 
do,  causes  productions  of  wit,  such  as  may 
rival  the  greatest  effect  of  art  whatever.  In 
relation  to  what  I  am  now  speaking  of,  the 
Gascon  proverb,  derived  from  a  cornpipe,  is 
very  quaint  and  subtle: — 

"You  may  blow  till  your  eyes  start  out;  but 
if  once  you  offer  to  stir  your  fingers,  it  is  all 
over." 

We  can  say,  Cicero  says  thus;  these  were  the 
manners  of  Plato ;  these  are  the  very  words  of 
Aristotle:  but  what  do  we  say  ourselves? 
What  do  we  judge?  A  parrot  would  say  as 
much  as  that. 
And  this  puts  me  in  mind  of  that  rich  gen- 


MONTAIGNE  43 

tleman  of  Rome,  who  had  been  solicitous,  with 
very  great  expense,  to  procure  men  that  were 
excellent  in  all  sorts  of  science,  whom  he 
had  always  attending  his  person,  to  the  end, 
that  when  amongst  his  friends  any  occasion 
fell  out  of  speaking  of  any  subject  whatso- 
ever, they  might  supply  his  place,  and  be 
ready  to  prompt  him,  one  with  a  sentence  of 
Seneca,  another  with  a  verse  of  Homer,  and 
so  forth,  every  one  according  to  his  talent; 
and  he  fancied  this  knowledge  to  be  his  own, 
because  it  was  in  the  heads  of  those  who  lived 
upon  his  bounty :  as  they  also  do,  whose  learn- 
ing consists  in  having  noble  libraries.  I  know 
one,  who,  when  I  question  him  what  he 
knows,  he  presently  calls  for  a  book  to  show 
me,  and  dares  not  venture  to  tell  me  so  much, 
as  that  he  has  piles  in  his  posteriors,  till  first 
he  has  consulted  his  dictionary,  what  piles 
and  what  posteriors  are. 

We  take  other  men's  knowledge  and 
opinions  upon  trust;  which  is  an  idle  and 
superficial  learning.  We  must  make  it  our 
own.  We  are  in  this  very  like  him,  who  hav- 
ing need  of  fire,  went  to  a  neighbor's  house 
to  fetch  it,  and  finding  a  very  good  one  there, 


44  MONTAIGNE 

sat  down  to  warm  himself  without  remember- 
ing to  carry  any  with  him  home.  What  good 
does  it  do  us  to  have  the  stomach  full  of  meat, 
if  it  does  not  digest,  if  it  be  not  incorporated 
with  us,  if  it  does  not  nourish  and  support 
us?  Can  we  imagine  that  Lucullus,  whom  let- 
ters, without  any  manner  of  experience,  made 
so  great  a  captain,  learned  to  be  so  after  this 
perfunctory  manner?  We  suffer  ourselves  to 
lean  and  rely  so  strongly  upon  the  arm  of 
another,  that  we  destroy  our  own  strength 
and  vigor.  Would  I  fortify  myself  against 
the  fear  of  death,  it  must  be  at  the  expense 
of  Seneca:  would  I  extract  consolation  for 
myself  or  my  friend,  I  borrow  it  from  Cicero. 
I  might  have  found  it  in  myself,  had  I  been 
trained  to  make  use  of  my  own  reason.  I  do 
not  like  this  relative  and  mendicant  under- 
standing; for  though  we  could  become  learned 
by  other  men's  learning,  a  man  can  never  be 
wise  but  by  his  own  wisdom : — 

"I  hate  the  wise  man,  who  in  his  own  con- 
cern is  not  wise." 

Whence  Ennius: — 


MONTAIGNE  45 

"That  wise  man  knows  nothing,  who  can- 
not profit  himself  by  his  wisdom." 

1  'If  he  be  grasping,  or  a  boaster,  and  some- 
thing softer  than  an  Euganean  lamb." 

"For  wisdom  is  not  only  to  be  acquired, 
bnt  to  be  utilized.' ■ 

Dionysius  laughed  at  the  grammarians, 
who  set  themselves  to  inquire  into  the 
miseries  of  Ulysses,  and  were  ignorant  of 
their  own;  at  musicians,  who  were  so  exact 
in  tuning  their  instruments,  and  never  tuned 
their  manners;  at  orators,  who  made  it  a 
study  to  declare  what  is  justice,  but  never 
took  care  to  do  it.  If  the  mind  be  not  better 
disposed,  if  the  judgment  be  no  better  settled, 
I  had  much  rather  my  scholar  had  spent  his 
time  at  tennis,  for,  at  least,  his  body  would 
by  that  means  be  in  better  exercise  and 
breath.  Do  but  observe  him  when  he  comes 
back  from  school,  after  fifteen  or  sixteen 
years  that  he  has  been  there;  there  is  nothing 
bo  unfit  for  employment;  all  you  shall  find 
he  has  got,  is,  that  his  Latin  and  Greek  have 
only  made  him  a  greater  coxcomb  than  when 


46  MONTAIGNE 

he  went  from  home.  He  should  bring  back 
his  soul  replete  with  good  literature,  and  he 
brings  it  only  swelled  and  puffed  up  with  vain 
and  empty  shreds  and  patches  of  learning; 
and  has  really  nothing  more  in  him  than  he 
had  before. 

These  pedants  of  ours,  as  Plato  says  of  the 
Sophists,  their  cousin-germans,  are,  of  all 
men,  they  who  most  pretend  to  be  useful  to 
mankind,  and  who  alone,  of  all  men,  not  only 
do  better  and  improve  that  which  is  com- 
mitted to  them,  as  a  carpenter  or  a  mason 
would  do,  but  make  them  much  worse,  and 
make  us  pay  them  for  making  them  worse,  to 
boot.  If  the  rule  which  Protagoras  proposed 
to  his  pupils  were  followed — either  that  they 
should  give  him  his  own  demand,  or  make 
affidavit  upon  oath  in  the  temple  how  much 
they  valued  the  profit  they  had  received  un- 
der his  tuition,  and  satisfy  him  accordingly 
— my  pedagogues  would  find  themselves 
sorely  gravelled,  if  they  were  to  be  judged 
by  the  affidavits  of  my  experience.  My  Peri- 
gordin  patois  very  pleasantly  calls  these  pre- 
tenders to  learning,  lettre-ferits,  as  a  man 
should  say,  letter-marked — men  on  whom  let- 


MONTAIGNE  47 

ters  have  been  stamped  by  the  blow  of  a 
mallet.  And,  in  truth,  for  the  most  part,  they 
appear  to  be  deprived  even  of  common  sense; 
for  you  see  the  husbandman  and  the  cobbler 
go  simply  and  fairly  about  their  business, 
speaking  only  of  what  they  know  and  under- 
stand ;  whereas  these  fellows,  to  make  parade 
and  to  get  opinion,  mustering  this  ridiculous 
knowledge  of  theirs,  that  floats  on  the  super- 
ficies of  the  brain,  are  perpetually  perplexing 
and  entangling  themselves  in  their  own  non- 
sense. They  speak  fine  words  sometimes, 
'tis  true,  but  let  somebody  that  is  wiser  apply 
them.  They  are  wonderfully  well  acquainted 
with  Galen,  but  not  at  all  with  the  disease  of 
the  patient;  they  have  already  deafened  you 
with  a  long  ribble-row  of  laws,  but  under- 
stand nothing  of  the  case  in  hand ;  they  have 
the  theory  of  all  things,  let  who  will  put  it  in 
practice. 

I  have  sat  by,  when  a  friend  of  mine,  in  my 
own  house,  for  sport-sake,  has  with  one  of 
these  fellows  counterfeited  a  jargon  of  Gali- 
matias, patched  up  of  phrases  without  head 
or  tail,  saving  that  he  interlarded  here  and 
there  some  terms  that  had  relation  to  their 


48  MONTAIGNE 

dispute,  and  held  the  coxcomb  in  play  a  whole 
afternoon  together,  who  all  the  while  thought 
he  had  answered  pertinently  and  learnedly  to 
all  his  objections;  and  yet  this  was  a  man  of 
letters,  and  reputation,  and  a  fine  gentleman 
of  the  long  robe: — 

"0  you,  0  patrician  blood,  to  whom  it  is 
permitted  to  live  with  eyes  in  the  back  of 
your  head,  beware  of  grimaces  at  you  from 
behind." 

Whosoever  shall  narrowly  pry  into  and 
thoroughly  sift  this  sort  of  people,  wherewith 
the  world  is  so  pestered,  will,  as  I  have  done, 
find,  that  for  the  most  part,  they  neither  un- 
derstand others,  nor  themselves;  and  that 
their  memories  are  full  enough,  but  the  judg- 
ment totally  void  and  empty;  some  excepted, 
whose  own  nature  has  of  itself  formed  them 
into  better  fashion.  As  I  have  observed,  for 
example,  in  Adrian  Turnebus,  who  having 
never  made  other  profession  than  that  of 
mere  learning  only,  and  in  that,  in  my 
opinion,  he  was  the  greatest  man  that  has 
been  these  thousand  years,  had  nothing  at  all 
in  him  of  the  pedant,  but  the    wearing   of 


MONTAIGNE  49 

his  gown,  and  a  little  exterior  fashion,  that 
could  not  be  civilized  to  courtier  ways,  which 
in  themselves  are  nothing.  I  hate  our  people, 
who  can  worse  endure  an  ill-contrived  robe 
than  an  ill-contrived  mind,  and  take  their 
measure  by  the  leg  a  man  makes,  by  his  be- 
havior, and  so  much  as  the  very  fashion  of 
his  boots,  what  kind  of  man  he  is.  For  within 
there  was  not  a  more  polished  soul  upon 
earth.  I  have  often  purposely  put  him  upon 
arguments  quite  wide  of  his  profession, 
wherein  I  found  he  had  so  clear  an  insight,  so 
quick  an  apprehension,  so  solid  a  judgment, 
that  a  man  would  have  thought  he  had  never 
practised  any  other  thing  but  arms,  and  been 
all  his  life  employed  in  affairs  of  State.  These 
are  great  and  vigorous  natures: — 

"Whom  benign   Titan  (Prometheus)  has 
framed  of  better  clay." 

that  can  keep  themselves  upright  in  despite 
of  a  pedantic  education.  But  it  is  not  enough 
that  our  education  does  not  spoil  us;  it  must, 
moreover,  alter  us  for  the  better. 

Some  of  our  Parliaments,  when  they  are  to 
admit  officers,  examine  only  their  learning; 


50  MONTAIGNE 

to  which  some  of  the  others  also  add  the  trial 
of  understanding,  by  asking  their  judgment 
of  some  case  in  law;  of  these  the  latter,  me- 
thinks,  proceed  with  the  better  method;  for 
although  both  are  necessary,  and  that  it  is 
very  requisite  they  should  be  defective  in 
neither,  yet,  in  truth,  knowledge  is  not  so 
absolutely  necessary  as  judgment;  the  last 
may  make  shift  without  the  other,  but  the 
other  never  without  this.  For  as  the  Greek 
verse  says — 

"To  what  use  serves  learning,  if  under- 
standing fail  us." 

Would  to  God  that,  for  the  good  of  our  judi- 
cature, these  societies  were  as  well  furnished 
with  understanding  and  conscience  as  they 
are  with  knowledge. 

"We  do  not  study  for  life,  but  only  for  the 
school." 

We  are  not  to  tie  learning  to  the  soul,  but  to 
work  and  incorporate  them  together:  not  to 
tincture  it  only,  but  to  give  it  a  thorough  and 
perfect  dye;  which,  if  it  will  not  take  color, 
and  meliorate  its  imperfect  state,  it  were 


MONTAIGNE  51 

without  question  better  to  let  it  alone.  'Tis  a 
dangerous  weapon,  that  will  hinder  and 
wound  its  master,  if  put  into  an  awkward  and 
unskillful  hand: — 

"So  that  it  were  better  not  to  have 
learned." 

And  this,  peradventure,  is  the  reason  why 
neither  we  nor  theology  require  much  learn- 
ing in  women;  and  that  Francis,  Duke  of 
Brittany,  son  of  John  V.,  one  talking  with 
him  about  his  marriage  with  Isabella  the 
daughter  of  Scotland,  and  adding  that  she 
was  homely  bred,  and  without  any  manner  of 
learning,  made  answer,  that  he  liked  her  the 
better,  and  that  a  woman  was  wise  enough, 
if  she  could  distinguish  her  husband's  shirt 
from  his  doublet.  So  that  it  is  no  so  great 
wonder,  as  they  make  of  it,  that  our  ancestors 
had  letters  in  no  greater  esteem,  and  that 
even  to  this  day  they  are  but  rarely  met  with 
in  the  principal  councils  of  princes;  and  if 
the  end  and  design  of  acquiring  riches,  which 
is  the  only  thing  we  propose  to  ourselves,  by 
the  means  of  law,  physic,  pedantry,  and  even 
divinity  itself,  did  not  uphold  and  keep  them 


52  MONTAIGNE 

in  credit,  you  would,  with  doubt,  see  them 
in  as  pitiful  a  condition  as  ever.  And  what 
loss  would  this  be,  if  they  neither  instruct  us 
to  think  well  nor  to  do  well  ? 

"Since  the  savans  have  made  their  appear- 
ance among  us,  the  good  people  have  become 
eclipsed." 

All  other  knowledge  is  hurtful  to  him  who 
has  not  the  science  of  goodness. 

But  the  reason  I  glanced  upon  but  now, 
may  it  not  also  hence  proceed,  that,  our 
studies  in  France  having  almost  no  other  aim 
but  profit,  except  as  to  those  who,  by  nature 
born  to  offices  and  employments  rather  of 
glory  than  gain,  addict  themselves  to  letters, 
if  at  all,  only  for  so  short  a  time  (being  taken 
from  their  studies  before  they  can  come  to 
have  any  taste  of  them,  to  a  profession  that 
has  nothing  to  do  with  books),  there  ordi- 
narily remain  no  others  to  apply  themselves 
wholly  to  learning,  but  people  of  mean  con- 
dition, who  in  that  only  seek  the  means  to 
live;  and  by  such  people,  whose  souls  are, 
both  by  nature  and  by  domestic  education  and 
example,  of  the  basest  alloy   the   fruits   of 


MONTAIGNE  53 

knowledge  are  immaturely  gathered  and  ill 
digested,  and  delivered  to  their  recipients 
quite  another  thing.  For  it  is  not  for  knowl- 
edge to  enlighten  a  sonl  that  is  dark  of  itself, 
nor  to  make  a  blind  man  see.  Her  business 
is  not  to  find  a  man's  eyes,  but  to  guide, 
govern,  and  direct  them,  provided  he  have 
sound  feet  and  straight  legs  to  go  upon. 
Knowledge  is  an  excellent  drug,  but  no  drug 
has  virtue  enough  to  preserve  itself  from 
corruption  and  decay,  if  the  vessel  be  tainted 
and  impure  wherein  it  is  put  to  keep.  Such 
a  one  may  have  a  sight  clear  enough  who 
looks  asquint,  and  consequently  sees  what  is 
good,  but  does  not  follow  it,  and  sees  knowl- 
edge, but  makes  no  use  of  it.  Plato's  prin- 
cipal institution  in  his  Republic  is  to  fit  his 
citizens  with  employments  suitable  to  their 
nature.  Nature  can  do  all,  and  does  all. 
Cripples  are  very  unfit  for  exercises  of  the 
body,  and  lame  souls  for  exercises  of  the 
mind.  Degenerate  and  vulgar  souls  are  un- 
worthy of  philosophy.  If  we  see  a  shoe- 
maker with  his  shoes  out  at  the  toes,  we  say, 
'tis  no  wonder;  for,  commonly,  none  go  worse 
shod  than  they.    In  like  manner,  experience 


54  MONTAIGNE 

often  presents  ns  a  physician  worse  phy- 
sicked, a  divine  less  reformed,  and  (con- 
stantly) a  scholar  of  less  sufficiency,  than 
other  people. 

Aristo  of  Chios  had  reason  to  say  that 
philosophers  did  their  auditors  harm,  foras- 
much as  most  of  the  souls  of  those  that  heard 
them  were  not  capable  of  deriving  benefit 
from  instruction,  which,  if  not  applied  to 
good,  would  certainly  be  applied  to  ill: 

"They  proceeded  effeminate  debauchees 
from  the  school  of  Aristippus,  cynics  from 
that  of  Zeno." 

In  that  excellent  institution  that  Xenophon 
attributes  to  the  Persians,  we  find  that  they 
taught  their  children  virtue,  as  other  nations 
do  letters.  Plato  tells  us  that  the  eldest  son 
in  their  royal  succession  was  thus  brought  up; 
after  his  birth  he  was  delivered,  not  to 
women,  but  to  eunuchs  of  the  greatest  author- 
ity about  their  kings  for  their  virtue,  whose 
charge  it  was  to  keep  his  body  healthful  and 
in  good  plight;  and  after  he  came  to  seven 
years  of  age,  to  teach  him  to  ride  and  to  go 


MONTAIGNE  55 

a-hunting.  When  he  arrived  at  fourteen  he 
was  transferred  into  the  hands  of  four,  the 
wisest,  the  most  just,  the  most  temperate,  and 
most  valiant  of  the  nation ;  of  whom  the  first 
was  to  instruct  him  in  religion,  the  second  to 
be  always  upright  and  sincere,  the  third  to 
conquer  his  appetites  and  desires,  and  the 
fourth  to  despise  all  danger. 

It  is  a  thing  worthy  of  very  great  consider- 
ation, that  in  that  excellent,  and,  in  truth,  for 
its  perfection,  prodigious  form  of  civil 
regimen  set  down  by  Lycurgus,  though  so 
solicitous  of  the  education  of  children,  as  a 
thing  of  the  greatest  concern,  and  even  in  the 
very  seat  of  the  Muses,  he  should  make  so 
little  mention  of  learning;  as  if  that  generous 
youth,  disdaining  all  other  subjection  but  that 
of  virtue,  ought  to  be  supplied,  instead  of 
tutors  to  read  to  them  arts  and  sciences,  with 
such  masters  as  should  only  instruct  them  in 
valor,  prudence  and  justice;  an  example  that 
Plato  has  followed  in  his  laws.  The  manner 
of  their  discipline  was  to  propound  to  them 
questions  in  judgment  upon  men  and  their 
actions;  and  if  they  commended  or  con- 
demned this  or  that  person  or  fact,  they  were 


56  MONTAIGNE 

to  give  a  reason  for  so  doing;  by  which  means 
they  at  once  sharpened  their  understanding, 
and  learned  what  was  right.  Astyages,  in 
Xenophon,  asks  Cyrus  to  give  an  account  of 
his  last  lesson;  and  thus  it  was,  "A  great  boy 
in  our  school,  having  a  little  short  cassock,  by 
force  took  a  longer  from  another  that  was 
not  so  tall  as  he,  and  gave  him  his  own  in  ex- 
change: whereupon  I,  being  appointed  judge 
of  the  controversy,  gave  judgment,  that  I 
thought  it  best  each  should  keep  the  coat  he 
had,  for  that  they  both  of  them  were  better 
fitted  with  that  of  one  another  than  with  their 
own:  upon  which  my  master  told  me,  I  had 
done  ill,  in  that  I  had  only  considered  the 
fitness  of  the  garments,  whereas  I  ought  to 
have  considered  the  justice  of  the  thing, 
which  required  that  no  one  should  have  any- 
thing forcibly  taken  from  him  that  is  his 
own."  And  Cyrus  adds  that  he  was  whipped 
for  his  pains,  as  we  are  in  our  villages  for 
forgetting  the  first  aorist  of  tupto. 

My  pedant  must  make  me  a  very  learned 
oration,  in  genere  demonstrative,  before  he 
can  persuade  me  that  his  school  is  like  unto 
that.    They  knew  how  to  go  the  readiest  way 


MONTAIGNE  57 

to  work;  and  seeing  that  science,  when  most 
rightly  applied  and  best  understood,  can  do 
no  more  but  teach  us  prudence,  moral  hon- 
esty, and  resolution,  they  thought  fit,  at  first 
hand,  to  initiate  their  children  with  the 
knowledge  of  effects,  and  to  instruct  them, 
not  by  hearsay  and  rote,  but  by  the  experi- 
ment of  action,  in  lively  forming  and  mould- 
ing them;  not  only  by  words  and  precepts,  but 
chiefly  by  works  and  examples;  to  the  end  it 
might  not  be  a  knowledge  in  the  mind  only, 
but  its  complexion  and  habit:  not  an  acquisi- 
tion, but  a  natural  possession.  One  asking  to 
this  purpose,  Agesilaus,  what  he  thought 
most  proper  for  boys  to  learn!  "What  they 
ought  to  do  when  they  come  to  be  men, ' '  said 
he.  It  is  no  wonder,  if  such  an  institution 
produced  so  admirable  effects. 

They  used  to  go,  it  is  said,  to  the  other 
cities  of  Greece,  to  inquire  out  rhetoricians, 
painters,  and  musicians;  but  to  Lacedaemon 
for  legislators,  magistrates,  and  generals  of 
armies;  at  Athens  they  learned  to  speak  well: 
here  to  do  well ;  there  to  disengage  themselves 
from  a  sophistical  argument,  and  to  unravel 
the  imposture  of  captious  syllogisms;  here  to 


58  MONTAIGNE 

evade  the  baits  and  allurements  of  pleasure, 
and  with  a  noble  courage  and  resolution  to 
conquer  the  menaces  of  fortune  and  death; 
those  cudgelled  their  brains  about  words, 
these  made  it  their  business  to  inquire  into 
things;  there  was  an  eternal  babble  of  the 
tongue,  here  a  continual  exercise  of  the  soul. 
And  therefore  it  is  nothing  strange  if,  when 
Antipater  demanded  of  them  fifty  children 
for  hostages,  they  made  answer,  quite  con- 
trary to  what  we  should  do,  that  they  would 
rather  give  him  twice  as  many  full-grown 
men,  so  much  did  they  value  the  loss  of  their 
country's  education.  "When  Agesilaus 
courted  Xenophon  to  send  his  children  to 
Sparta  to  be  bred,  "it  is  not,"  said  he,  "there 
to  learn  logic  or  rhetoric,  but  to  be  instructed 
in  the  noblest  of  all  sciences,  namely,  the 
science  to  obey  and  to  command." 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  see  Socrates,  after  his 
manner,  rallying  Hippias,  who  recounts  to 
him  what  a  world  of  money  he  has  got, 
especially  in  certain  little  villages  of  Sicily, 
by  teaching  school,  and  that  he  made  never 
a  penny  at  Sparta:  "What  a  sottish  and  stupid 
people,"  said  Socrates,  "are  they,  without 


MONTAIGNE  59 

sense  or  understanding,  that  make  no  account 
either  of  grammar  or  poetry,  and  only  busy 
themselves  in  studying  the  genealogies  and 
successions  of  their  kings,  the  foundations, 
rises,  and  declensions  of  states,  and  such 
tales  of  a  tub!"  After  which,  having  made 
Hippias  from  one  step  to  another  ac- 
knowledge the  excellency  of  their  form  of 
public  administration,  and  the  felicity  and 
virtue  of  their  private  life,  he  leaves  him  to 
guess  at  the  conclusion  he  makes  of  the 
inutilities  of  his  pedantic  arts. 

Examples  have  demonstrated  to  us  that  in 
military  affairs,  and  all  others  of  the  like 
active  nature,  the  study  of  sciences  more 
softens  and  untempers  the  courages  of  men 
than  it  in  any  way  fortifies  and  excites  them. 
The  most  potent  empire  that  at  this  day  ap- 
pears to  be  in  the  whole  world  is  that  of  the 
Turks,  a  people  equally  inured  to  the  estima- 
tion of  arms  and  the  contempt  of  letters.  I 
find  Rome  was  more  valiant  before  she  grew 
so  learned.  The  most  warlike  nations  at  this 
time  in  being  are  the  most  rude  and  ignorant: 
the  Scythians,  the  Parthians,  Tamerlane, 
serve  for  sufficient  proof  of  this.    When  the 


60  MONTAIGNE 

Goths  overran  Greece,  the  only  thing  that 
preserved  all  the  libraries  from  the  fire  was, 
that  some  one  possessed  them  with  an  opinion 
that  they  were  to  leave  this  kind  of  furniture 
entire  to  the  enemy,  as  being  most  proper  to 
divert  them  from  the  exercise  of  arms,  and 
to  fix  them  to  a  lazy  and  sedentary  life.  When 
our  King  Charles  Viil.,  almost  without  strik- 
ing a  blow,  saw  himself  possessed  of  the  king- 
dom of  Naples  and  a  considerable  part  of 
Tuscany,  the  nobles  about  him  attributed  this 
unexpected  facility  of  conquest  to  this,  that 
the  princes  and  nobles  of  Italy,  more  studied 
to  render  themselves  ingenious  and  learned, 
than  vigorous  and  warlike. 

OF  THE  INSTITUTION  OF  CHILDREN. 
To  Madame  Diane  de  Forx, 

COMTESSE  DE  GURSON. 

I  NEVER  yet  saw  that  father,  but  let  his  son 
be  never  so  decrepit  or  deformed,  would  not, 
notwithstanding,  own  him:  not,  nevertheless, 
if  he  were  not  totally  besotted,  and  blinded 
with  his  paternal  affection,  that  he  did  not 
well  enough  discern  his  defects :  but  that  with 


MONTAIGNE  61 

all  defaults  he  was  still  his.  Just  so,  I  see 
better  than  any  other,  that  all  I  write  here 
are  hut  the  idle  reveries  of  a  man  that  has 
only  nibbled  upon  the  outward  crust  of 
sciences  in  his  nonage,  and  only  retained  a 
general  and  formless  image  of  them ;  who  has 
got  a  little  snatch  of  everything  and  nothing 
of  the  whole,  a  la  Francoise.  For  I  know,  in 
general,  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  physic, 
as  jurisprudence:  four  parts  in  mathematics, 
and,  roughly,  what  all  these  aim  and  point 
at;  and,  peradventure,  I  yet  know  farther, 
what  sciences  in  general  pretend  unto,  in 
order  to  the  service  of  our  life:  but  to  dive 
farther  than  that,  and  to  have  cudgelled  my 
brains  in  the  study  of  Aristotle,  the  monarch 
of  all  modern  learning,  or  particularly  ad- 
dicted myself  to  any  one  science,  I  have  never 
doufi  it;  neither  is  there  any  one  art  of  which 
I  am  able  to  draw  the  first  lineaments  and 
dead  color;  insomuch  that  there  is  not  a 
boy  of  the  lowest  form  in  a  school,  that  may 
not  pretend  to  be  wiser  than  I,  who  am  not 
able  to  examine  him  in  his  first  lesson,  which, 
if  I  am  at  any  time  forced  upon,  I  am  neces- 
sitated in  my  own  defence,  to  ask  him,  un- 


62      .  MONTAIGNE 

aptly  enough,  some  universal  questions,  such 
as  may  serve  to  try  his  natural  understand- 
ing; a  lesson  as  strange  and  unknown  to 
him,  as  his  is  to  me. 

I  never  seriously  settled  myself  to  the  read- 
ing any  book  of  solid  learning  but  Plutarch 
and  Seneca;  and  there,  like  the  Danaides,  I 
eternally  fill,  and  it  as  constantly  runs  out; 
something  of  which  drops  upon  this  paper, 
but  little  or  nothing  stays  with  me.  History 
is-jny  particular  game  as  to  matter  of  read- 
ing, or  else  poetrv.  for  which  I  have  a  par- 
ticular kindness  and  esteem  por,  as  Cleanthes 
fiaid,  as  the  voice,  forced  through  the  narrow 
passage  of  a  trumpet,  comes  out  more  forcible 
and  shrill:  so,  methinks,  a  sentence  pressed 
within  the  harmony  of  verse  darts  out  more 
briskly  upon  the  understanding,  and  strikes 
my  ear  and  apprehension  with  a  smarter  and 
more  pleasing  effectj  As  to  the  natural  parts 
I  have,  of  which  this  is  the  essay,  I  find  them 
to  bow  under  the  burden;  my  fancy  and 
judgment  do  but  grope  in  the  dark,  tripping 
and  stumbling  in  the  way;  and  when  I  have 
gone  as  far  as  I  can,  I  am  in  no  degree  satis- 
fied; I  discover  still  a  new  and  greater  ex- 


MONTAIGNE  63 

tent  of  land  before  me,  with  a  troubled  and 
imperfect  sight  and  wrapped  up  in  clouds, 
that  I  am  not  able  to  penetrate.  And  taking 
upon  me  to  write  indifferently  of  whatever 
comes  into  my  head,  and  therein  making  use 
of  nothing  but  my  own  proper  and  natural 
means,  if  it  befall  me,  as  oft-times  it  does, 
accidentally  to  meet  in  any  good  author,  the 
same  heads  and  commonplaces  upon  which  I 
have  attempted  to  write  (as  I  did  but  just 
now  in  Plutarch's  "Discourse  of  the  Force 
of  Imagination ' ' ) ,  to  see  myself  so  weak  and 
bo  forlorn,  so  heavy  and  so  flatt  in  compari- 
son of  those  better  writers.  I  at  once  pity  or 
despise  myself.  Yet  do  I  please  myself  with 
this,  that  my  opinions  have  often  the  honor 
.and  good  fortune  to  jump  with  theirs^  and 
that  I  go  in  the,  aamft  path,  though  at  a  very 
great  distance,  and  can  say.  "Ah.  that  is  so." 
I  -am  farther  satisfied  to  find  that  T  havft  a 
quality,  which  every  one  is  not  blessed 
withal,  which  is,  to  discern  the  vast  difference 
between  them  and  me;  and  notwithstanding 
all  that,  suffer  my  own  inventions,  low  and 
feeble  as  they  are,  to  run  on  in  their  career, 
without  mending  or  plastering  up  the  de- 


64  MONTAIGNE 

fects  that  this  comparison  has  laid  open  to 
my  own  view.  And,  in  plain  truth,  a  man 
had  need  of  a  good  strong  back  to  keep  pace 
with  these  people.  The  indiscreet  scribblers 
of  onr  times,  who,  amongst  their  laborious 
nni.hiTiffRT  insert  wfrole  section g  and  pggflg  cmt 
of  ancient  authors,  with  a  design,  by  that 
means,  to  illustrate  their  own  writings,  do 
quite  contrary:  for  this  infinite  dissimilitude 
of  ornaments  renders  the  complexion  of  their 
own  compositions  so  sallow  and  deformed, 
that  they  lose  much  more  than  they  get. 

The  philosophers,  Chrysippus  and  Epi- 
curus, were  in  this  of  two  quite  contrary 
humors:  the  first  not  only  in  his  books 
mixed  passages  and  sayings  of  other  authors, 
but  entire  pieces,  and,  in  one,  the  whole 
Medea  of  Euripides;  which  gave  Apollodorus 
occasion  to  say,  that  should  a  man  pick  out 
of  his  writings  all  that  was  none  of  his,  he 
would  leave  him  nothing  but  blank  paper: 
whereas  the  latter,  quite  on  the  contrary,  in 
three  hundred  volumes  that  he  left  behind 
him,  has  not  so  much  as  one  quotation. 

T  happened  the  other  dav  upon  this  piece 
of  fortune;  I  was  reading  a  French  book. 


MONTAIGNE  65 

where  after  I  had  a  long  time  run  dreaming 
over  a  great  many  words,  so  dull,  so  insipid, 
so  void  of  all  wit  or  common  sense,  that  in- 
deed they  were  only  French  words:  after  a 
long  and  tedious  travel,  I  came  at  last  to  meet 
with  a  piece  that  was  lofty,  rich,  and  elevated 
to^the  very  clouds;  of  which,  had  I  found 
either  the  declivity  easy  or  the  ascent 
gradual,  there  had  been  some  excuse;  but  it 
was  so  perpendicular  a  precipice,  and  so 
wholly  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  work,  that 
by  the  six  first  words,  I  found  myself  flying 
into  the  other  world,  and  thence  discovered 
the  vale  whence  I  came  so  deep  and  low,  that 
I  have  never  had  since  the  heart  to  descend 
into  it  any  more.  If  I  should  set  out  one  of 
my  discourses  with  such  rich  spoils  as  these, 
it  would  but  too  evidently  manifest  the  im- 
perfection of  my  own  writing.  To  reprehend 
the  fault  in  others  that  I  am  guilty  of  my- 
self, appears  to  me  no  more  unreasonable, 
than  to  condemn,  as  I  often  do,  those  of 
others  in  myself:  they  are  to  be  everywhere 
reproved,  and  ought  to  have  no  sanctuary 
allowed  them.  I  know  very  well  how  audaci- 
ously I  myself,  at  every  turn,  attempt  to  equal 


66  MONTAIGNE 

myself  to  my  thefts,  and  to  make  my  style 
go  hand  in  hand  with  them,  not  without  a 
temerarious  hope  of  deceiving  the  eyes  of  my 
reader  from  discerning  the  difference;  but 
withal  it  is  as  much  by  the  benefit  of  my  ap- 
plication, that  I  hope  to  do  it,  as  by  that  of 
my  invention  or  any  force  of  my  own.  Be- 
sides, I  do  not  offer  to  contend  with  the 
whole  body  of  these  champions,  nor  hand  to 
hand  with  any  one  of  them:  'tis  only  by 
flights  and  little  light  attempts  that  I  en- 
gage them;  I  do  not  grapple  with  them,  but 
try  their  strength  only,  and  never  engage  so 
far  as  I  make  a  show  to  do.  If  I  could  hold 
them  in  play,  I  were  a  brave  fellow;  for  I 
never  attack  them,  but  where  they  are  most 
sinewy  and  strong.  Xo  cover  a  man's  self  (as 
I  have  seen  some  do)  with  another  man's 
armor,  so  as  not  to  discover  so  much  as  his 
fingers'  ends;  to  carry  on  a  design  (as  it  is 
not  hard  for  a  man  that  has  anything  of  a 
scholar  in  him,  in  an  ordinary  subject  to  do) 
under  old  inventions  patched  up  here  and 
there  with  his  own  trumpery,  and  then  to  en- 
deavor  to  conceal  the  theft,  and  to  make  it 
pass  for  his  own,  is  first  injustice  and  mean- 


MONTAIGNE  67 

ne§s  of  spirit  in  those  who  do  it,  who  having 
nothing  in  them  of  their  own  fit  to  procure 
them  a  reputation,  endeavor  to  do  it  by  at- 
tempting to  impose  things  upon  the  world  in 
their  own  name,  which  they  have  no  manner 
of  title  to ;  and  next,  a  ridiculous  folly  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  acquiring  the  ignorant 
approbation  of  the  vulgar  by  such  a  pitiful 
cheat,  at  the  price  at  the  same  time  of  de- 
grading themselves  in  the  eyes  of  men  of  un- 
derstanding, who  turn  up  their  noses  at  all 
this  borrowed  incrustation,  yet  whose  praise 
alone  is  worth  the  having.  A  For  my  own  part, 
there  is  nothing  I  would  -not  sooner  do  than 
that,  neither  have  I  said  so  much  of  others, 
but  to  get  a  better  opportunity  to  explain  my- 
self. Nor  in  this  do  I  glance  at  the  composers 
of  centos,  who  declare  themselves  for  such; 
of  which  sort  of  writers  I  have  in  my  time 
known  many  very  ingenious,  and  particularly 
one  under  the  name  of  Capilupus,  besides  the 
ancients.  These  are  really  men  of  wit,  and 
that  make  it  appear  they  are  so,  both  by  that 
and  other  ways  of  writing;  as  for  example, 
Lipsius,  in  that  learned  and  laborious  con- 
texture of  his  Politics. 


68  MONTAIGNE 

But,  be  it  how  it  will,  and  how  inconsid- 
erable soever  these  ineptitudes  may  be,  I  will 
say  I  never  intended  to  conceal  them,  no  more 
than  my  old  bald  grizzled  likeness  before 
them,  where  the  painter  has  presented 
you  not  with  a  perfect  face,  but  with  mine. 
For  these  are  my  own  particular  opinions 
and  fancies,  and  I  deliver  them  as  only  what 
I  myself  believe,  and  not  for  what  is  to  be 
believed  by  others.  I  have  no  other  end  in 
this^  writing,  but  only,  to  discover  myself, 
who  also  shall,  peradventure,  be  another 
tjiing  to-morrow,  if  I  chance  to  meet  any  new 
instruction  to  change  me.  I  have  no  au- 
thority to  be  believed,  neither  do  I  desire  it, 
being  too  conscious  of  my  own  inerudition 
to  be  able  to  instruct  others. 

Some  one,  then,  having  seen  the  preceding 
chapter,  the  other  day  told  me  at  my  house, 
that  I  should  a  little  farther  have  extended 
my  discourse  on  the  education  of  children. 
Now,  madam,  if  I  had  any  sufficiency  in  this 
subject, .  I  could  not  possibly  better  employ 
it,  than  to  present  my  best  instructions  to  the 
little  man  that  threatens  you  shortly  with  a 
happy  birth  (for  you  are  too  generous  to  be- 


MONTAIGNE  69 

gin  otherwise  than  with  a  male) ;  for,  having 
had  so  great  a  hand  in  the  treaty  of  your 
marriage,  I  have  a  certain  particular  right 
and  interest  in  the  greatness  and  prosperity 
of  the  issue  that  shall  spring  from  it;  beside 
that,  your  having  had  the  best  of  my  services 
so  long  in  possession,  sufficiently  obliges  me 
to  desire  the  honor  and  advantage  of  all 
wherein  you  shall  be  concerned.  But,  in 
truth,  all  I  understand  as  to  that  particular 
is  only  this,  that  the  greatest  and  most  im- 
portant difficulty  of  human  science  is  the  edu- 
f  cation  of  children.  For  as  in  agriculture,  the 
husbandry  that  is  to  precede  planting,  as  also 
planting  itself,  is  certain,  plain,  and  well 
known;  but  after  that  which  is  planted  comes 
to  life,  there  is  a  great  deal  more  to  be  done, 
more  art  to  be  used,  more  care  to  be  taken, 
and  much  more  difficulty  to  cultivate  and 
bring  it  to  perfection:  so  it  is  with  menj  it 
is  no  hard  matter  to  get  children;  but  after 
they  are  born,  then  begins  the  trouble, 
solicitude,  and  care  rightly  to  train,  principle, 
and  bring  them  up.  The  symptoms  of  their 
iTiftljnfltimis  in  that  tender  age  are  so  obscure, 
an_d  the  promises  so  uncertain  and  fallacious, 


70  MONTAIGNE 

that  it  is  very  hard  to  establish  any  solid 
judgment  or  conjecture  upon  them.  Look  at 
Cimon,  for  example,  and  Themistocles,  and  a 
thousand  others,  who  very  much  deceived  the 
expectation  men  had  of  them.  Cubs  of  bears 
and  puppies  readily  discover  their  natural 
inclination;  but  men,  so  soon  as  ever  they  are 
grown  up,  applying  themselves  to  certain 
habits,  engaging  themselves  in  certain 
opinions,  and  conforming  themselves  to  par- 
ticular laws  and  customs,  easily  alter,  or  at 
least  disguise,  their  true  and  real  disposition; 
and  yet  it  is  hard  to  force  the  propension  of 
nature.  Whence  it  comes  to  pass,  that  for 
not  having  chosen  the  right  course,  \je__often_ 
take  very  great  pains,  and  consume  a  good 
part  of  our  time  in  training  up  children  to 
things,  for  which,  by  their  natural  constitu- 
tion, they  are  totally  unfit.  In  this  difficulty, 
nevertheless,  I  am  clearly  of  opinion,  that 
they  ought  to  be  elemented  in  the  best  and 
most  advantageous  studies,  without  taking 
too  much  notice  of,  or  being  too  superstitious 
in  those  light  prognostics  they  give  of  them- 
selves in  their  tender  years,  and  to  which 
Plato,  in  his  Republic,  gives,  methinks,  too 
much  authority. 


MONTAIGNE  71 

Madam,  science  is  a  very  great  ornamnet, 
and  a  thing  of  marvellous  use,  especially  in 
persons  raised  to  that  degree  of  fortune  in 
which  you  are.  And,  in  truth,  in  persons  of 
mean  and  low  condition,  it  cannot  perform 
its  true  and  genuine  office,  being  naturally 
more  prompt  to  assist  in  the  conduct  of  war, 
in  the  government  of  peoples,  in  negotiating 
the  leagues  and  friendships  of  princes  and 
foreign  nations,  than  in  forming  a  syllogism 
in  logic,  in  pleading  a  process  in  law,  or  in 
prescribing  a  dose  of  pills  in  physic.  Where- 
fore, madam,  believing  you  will  not  omit  this 
so  necessary  feature  in  the  education  of  your 
children,  who  yourself  have  tasted  its  sweet- 
ness, and  are  of  a  learned  extraction  (for  we 
yet  have  the  writings  of  the  ancient  Counts 
of  Foix,  from  whom  my  lord,  your  husband, 
and  yourself,  are  both  of  you  descended,  and 
Monsieur  de  Candale,  your  uncle,  every  day 
obliges  the  world  with  others,  which  will  ex- 
tend the  knowledge  of  this  quality  in  your 
family  for  so  many  succeeding  ages) L I  will, 
upon_tliis_Qccasion,  presume  to  acquaint  your 
ladyship^  with  one  particular  fancy  of  my 
pwiy  contrary  to  the  common  method,  which 


72  MONTAIGNE 

is  all  I  am  able  to  contribute  to  your  service 
in  this  affair. 

The  charge  of  the  tutor  you  shall  provide 
for  vour  sony  upon  the  choice  of  whom  de- 
pends the  whole  success  of  his  education,  has 
several  other  great  and  considerable  parts 
and  duties  required  in  so  important  a  trust, 
besides  that  of  which  I  am  about  to  speak: 
these,  however,  I  shall  not  mention,  as  being 
unable  to  add  anything  of  moment  to  the 
common  rules:  and  in  this,  wherein  I  take 
upon  me  to  advise,  he  may  follow  it  so  far 
only  as  it  shall  appear  advisable. 

For  a  boy  of  quality  then,  who  pretends  to 
Ls  letters  not  upon  the  account  of  profit  (for 
so  mean  an  object  as  that  is  unworthy  of  the 
grace  and  favor  of  the  Muses,  and,  more- 
over, in  it  a  man  directs  his  service  to  and 
depends  upon  others),  nor  so  much  for  out- 
ward ornament,  as  for  his  own  proper  and 
peculiar  use,  and  to  furnish  and  enrich  him- 
self within,  having  rather  a  desire  to  come 
out  an  accomplished  cavalier  than  a  mere 
scholar  or  learned  man;  for  such  a  one,  I  say, 
I  would,  also,  have  his  friends  solicitous  to 
find  him  out  a  tutor,  who  has  rather  a  well- 


0 


MONTAIGNE  73 

made  than  a  well-filled  head;  seeking,  indeed, 
both  the  one  and  the  other,  but  rather  of  the 
two  to  prefer  manners  and  judgment  to  mere 
learning,  and  that  this  man  should  exercise 
his  charge  after  a  new  method. 

'Tjs  the  custom  of  pedagogues  to  be 
eternally  thundering  in  their  pupil's  ears,  as 
they  were  pouring  into  a  funnel,  whilst  the 
business  of  the  pupil  is  only  to  repeat  what 
the  others  have  said:  now  I  would  have  a 
tutor  to  correct  this  error,  and,  that  at  the 
very  first,  he  should  according  to  the  capacity 
he  has  to  deal  with,  put  it  to  the  test,  per- 
mitting his  pupil  himself  to  taste  things,  and 
of  himself  to  discern  and  choose  them,  some- 
times opening  the  way  to  him,  and  sometimes 
leaving  him  to  open  it  for  himself;  that  is, 
I  would  not  have  him  alone  to  invent  and 
speak,  but  that  he  should  also  hear  his  pupil 
speak  in  turn.  Socrates,  and  since  him 
Arcesilaus,  made  first  their  scholars  speak, 
and  then  they  spoke  to  them: — 

"The  authority  of  those  who  teach,  is  very  \ 
often  an  impediment  to  those  who  desire  to  < 
learn." 


74 


MONTAIGNE 


V 


It  is  good  to  make  him,  like  a  young  horse, 
trot  before  him,  that  he  may  .judge  of  his 


going,  and  how  much  he  is  to  abate  of  his 


V< 


own  speed,  to  accommodate  himself  to  the 
vigor  and  capacity  of  thft  other.  For  want 
of  which  due  proportion  we  spoil  all;  which 
also  to  know  how  to  adjust,  and  to  keep 
within  an  exact  and  due  measure,  is  one  of 
the  hardest  things  I  know,  and  'tis  the  effect 
of  a  high  and  well-tempered  soul,  to  know 
how  to  condescend  to  such  puerile  motions 
and  to  govern  and  direct  them.  [I  walk 
firmer  and  more  secure  up  hill  than  downl 
Suc]i  as.  according  to  our  common  way 

\\\  of  teaching,  undertake,  with  one  and  the 
same  lesson,  and  the  same  measure  of  direc- 
tion to  instruct  several  boys  of  differing  and 
unequal  capacities,  are  infinitely  mistaken; 
and  'tis  no  wonder,  if  in  a  whole  multitude  of 
scholars,  there  are  not  found  above  two  or 
three  who  bring  away  any  good  account  of 
their  time  and  discipline.  Let  the  master 
not  only  examine  him  about  the  grammatical 

K2/  construction  of  the  bare  words  of  his  lesson, 
hut  ahnnt  the  sense  and  substance  of  them, 
and  let  him  judge  of  the  profit  he  has  made, 


MONTAIGNE  75 

not  by  the  testimony  of  fris  memoryT  but  by 
that  of  his  life.  Let  him  make  him  put  what 
he  has  learned  into  a  hundred  several  forms, 
and  accommodate  it  to  so  many  several  sub- 
jects, to  see  if  he  yet  rightly  comprehends  it, 
and  has  made  it  his  own,  taking  instruction 
of  his  progress  by  the  pedagogic  institutions 
of  Plato.  "Tis  a  sign  of  crudity  and  indiges-  (^ 
tion  to  disgorge  what  we  eat  in  the  same  con- 
dition it  was  swallowed ;  the  stomach  has  not 
performed  its  office  unless  it  have  altered  the 
form  and  condition  of  what  w«<*  flommittpd  to 
it  to  concoct.  Our  minds  work  only  upon 
trust,  when  bound  and  compelled  to  follow 
the  appetite  of  another's  fancy,  enslaved  and  /* 
captivated  under  the  authority  of  another's  \j) 
instruction;  we  have  been  so  subjected  to 
the  trammel,  that  we  have  no  free,  nor 
natural  pace  of  our  own;  our  own  vigor  and 
liberty  are  extinct  and  gone: — 

* '  They  never  become  their  own  guardians. ' ' 

I  was  privately  carried  at  Pisa  to  see  a 
very  honest  man,  but  so  great  an  Aristotelian, 
that  his  most  usual  thesis  was:  "That  the 
touchstone  and  square  of  all  solid  imagina- 


76  MONTAIGNE 

tion,  and  of  all  truth,  was  an  absolute  con- 
formity to  Aristotle's  doctrine;  and  that  all 
besides  was  nothing  but  inanity  and  chimera; 
for  that  he  had  seen  all,  and  said  all."  A 
position,  that  for  having  been  a  little  too  in- 
juriously and  broadly  interpreted,  brought 
him  once  and  long  kept  him  in  great  danger 
of  the  Inquisition  at  Rome. 

Lei  him  make  him  examine  and  thoroughly 
sift  everything  he  readsr  and  lodge  nothing- 
l^  in/iiis  fancv  upon  simple  authority  and  upon 
trust.  Aristotle's  principles  will  then  be  no 
more  principles  to  him,  than  those  of  Epi- 
curus and  the  Stoics:  let  this  diversity  of 
opinions  be  propounded  to,  and  laid  before 
him:  he  will  himself  choose,  if  he  be  able? 
if  not,  he  will  remain  in  dnnht 

"It  pleases  me  to  doubt,  not  less  than  to 
know," 

for,  if  he  embrace  the  opinions  of  Xenophon 
and  Plato,  by  his  own  reason,  they  will  no 
more  be  theirs,  but  become  his  own.  Who 
follows  another,  follows  nothing,  finds  noth- 
ing, nay,  is  inquisitive  after  nothing. 


( 


MONTAIGNE  77 

*  *  We  are  under  no  king;  let  each  vindicate 
himself." 

Let  him,  at  least,  know  that  he  knows.  It 
will  be  necessary  that  he  imbibe  their 
knowledge,  not  that  he  be  corrupted  with 
their  precepts;  and  no  matter  if  he  forget 
where  he  had  his  learning,  provided  he  know 
how  to  apply  it  to  his  own  use.  Truth  and 
reason  are  common  to  every  one,  and  are  no 
more  his  who  spake  them  first,  than  his  who* 
speaks  them  after:  'tis  no  more  according  to 
Plato,  than  according  to  me,  since  both  he 
and  I  equally  see  and  understand  them.  Bees 
cuILtheir  several  sweets  from  this  flowerand 
that  blossom,  here  and  there  where  they  find 
them,  but  themselves  afterwards  make  the 
honey,  which  is  all  and  purely  their  own,  and 
no  more  thvme  and  marjoram :  so  the  several 
fragments  he  borrows  from  others,  he  will 
transform  and  shuffle  together  to  compile  a 
work  that  shall  be  absolutely  his  own;  that 
is  to  say,  his  judgment:  his  instruction, 
labor  and  study,  tend  to  nothing  else  but 
to  form  that.    He  is  not  obliged  to  discover 


D 


78  MONTAIGNE 

whence  he  got  the  materials  that  have  as- 
sisted him?  but  only  to  poflaBB  what  h^  has 
himself  done  with  them.    Men  that  live  upon 
pillage  and  borrowing,    expose    their    pur 
chases  and  buildings  to  every  one's  view: 
but  do  not  proclaim  how  they  came  by  th 
money.     We  do  not  see  the  fees  and  per 
quisites  of  a  gentleman  of  the  long  robe;  but 
we  see  the  alliances  wherewith  he  fortifies 
himself  and  his  family,  and  the  titles  and 
honors  he  has  obtained  for  him  and  his.    No 
man  divulges  his  revenue;  or,  at  least,  which 
way  it  comes  in:  but  every  one  publishes  his 
-z\  acquisitions.    Tjbe  advantages  of  our  study 
are  to  become  better  and  more  wise.     "lis, 

I       i  ^       m  ■—■■■  ■  ■  -  ■ 

says  Epicharmus,  jhe  understanding  that  sees 
and  hears,  'tis  the  understanding  that  im- 
proves everything,  that  orders  pvprythingj 
and  that  acts,  rules,  and  reigns:  all  other 
faculties  are  blind,  and  deaf,  and  without 
soul.  And  certainly  we  render  it  timorous 
and  servile,  in  not  allowing  it  the  liberty  and 
privilege  to  do  anything  of  itself.  Whoever 
asked  his  pupil  what  he  thought  of  grammar 
and  rhetoric,  or  of  such  and  such  a  sentence 
of  Cicero?     Our  masters  stick    them,    full 


3 


i 


MONTAIGNE  79 

feathered,  in  our  memories,  and  there  es- 
tablish them  like  oracles,  of  which  the  let- 
ters and  syllables  are  of  the  substance  of  the 
thing.  To  know  by  rote,  is  no  knowledge, 
and  signifies  no  more  but  only  to  retain  what 
one  has  intrusted  to  our  memory.  That 
which  a  man  rightly  knows  and  understands, 
he  is  the  free  disposer  of  at  his  own  full 
liberty,  without  any  regard  to  the  author 
from  whence  he  had  it,  or  fumbling  over  the 
leaves  of  his  book.  A  mere  bookish  learning 
is  a  poor,  paltry  learning;  it  may  serve  for 
ornament,  but  there  is  yet  no  foundation  for 
any  superstructure  to  be  built  upon  it,  ac- 
cording to  the  opinion  of  Plato,  who  says, 
that  constancy,  faith,  and  sincerity,  are  the 
true  philosophy,  and  the  other  sciences,  that 
are  directed  to  other  ends,  mere  adulterate 
paint.  I  could  wish  that  Paluel  or  Pompey, 
those  two  noted  dancers  of  my  time,  could 
have  taught  us  to  cut  capers,  by  only  seeing 
them  do  it,  without  stirring  from  our  places, 
as  these  men  pretend  to  inform  the  under- 
standing, without  ever  setting  it  to  work;  or 
that  we  could  learn  to  ride,  handle  a  pike, 
touch  a  lute,  or  sing,  without  the  trouble  of 


80  MONTAIGNE 

practice,  as  these  attempt  to  make  us  judge 
and  speak  well,  without  exercising  us  in 
judging  or  speaking.  Now  in  this  initiation 
of  our  studies  in  their  progress,  whatsoever 
presents  itself  before  us  is  book  sufficient; 
a  roguish  trick  of  a  page,  a  sottish  mistake  of 
a  servant,  a  jest  at  the  table,  are  so  many 
new  subjects. 

And  for  this  reason,  conversation  with  men 
is  of  very  great  use  and  travel  into  foreign 
countries:  not  to  bring  back  (as  most  of  our 
young  monsieurs  do)  an  acconnt  only  of  how 
many  paces  Santa  Eotonda  is  in  circuit;  or 
of  the  richness  of  Signora  Livia's  petticoats; 
or,  as  some  others,  how  much  Nero's  face,  in 
a  statue  in  such  an  old  ruin,  is  longer  and 
broader  than  that  made  for  him  on  some 
medal;  but  to  be  able  chiefly  to  give  an  ac- 
count of  the  humors,  manners,  customs,  and 
laws  of  those  nations  where  he  has  been* 
and  that  we  may  whet  and  sharpen  our  wits 
by  rubbing  them  against  those  of  others.  J. 
would  that  a  boy  should  be  sent  abroad  very 
(^)  young,  and  first,  so  as  to  kill  two  birds  with 
one  stone,  into  those  neighboring  nations 
whose  language  is  most  differing  from  our 


MONTAIGNE  81 

own,  and  to  which,  if  it  be  not  formed  be- 
times, the  tongue  will  grow  too  stiff  to  bend. 
And  also  'tis  the  general  opinion  of  all, 
that  jbl  child  should  not  be  bronpftt  rip  in  hia  ^  ^ 
mother's  lap.  Mothers  are  too  tender,  and 
their  natural  affection  is  apt  to  make  the 
most  discreet  of  them  all  so  overfond,  that 
they  can  neither  find  in  their  hearts  to  give 
them  due  correction  for  the  faults  they  may 
commit,  nor  suffer  them  to  be  inured  to  hard- 
ships and  hazards,  as  they  ought  to  be.  They 
will  not  endure  to  see  them  return  all  dust 
and  sweat  from  their  exercise,  to  drink  cold 
drink  when  they  are  hot,  nor  see  them  mount 
an  unruly  horse,  nor  take  a  foil  in  hand 
against  a  rude  fencer,  or  so  much  as  to  dis- 
charge a  carbine.  And  yet  there  is  no 
remedy;  whoever  will  breed  a  boy  to  be  good 
for  anything  when  he  comes  to  be  a  manf 
must  by  no  means  spare  him  when  young, 
and  must  very  often  transgress  the  rules  of, 
physic:— 

"Let  him  lead  his  life  in  the  open  air,  and 
in  business." 

It  is  not  enough  to  fortify  his  soul;  you  are 


82  MONTAIGNE 

also  to  make  his  sinews  strong;  for  the  soul 


wjll  be  oppressed  if  not  assisted  by  the  mem- 
bers, and  would  have  too  hard  a  task  to  dis- 
charge two  offices  alone.  I  know  very  well 
to  my  cost,  how  much  mine  groans  under  the 
burden,  from  being  accommodated  with  a 
body  so  tender  and  indisposed,  as  eternally 
leans  and  presses  upon  her;  and  often  in  my 
reading  perceive  that  our  masters,  in  their 
writings,  make  examples  pass  for  mag- 
nanimity and  fortitude  of  mind,  which  really 
are  rather  toughness  of  skin  and  hardness  of 
bones ;  for  I  have  seen  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, naturally  born  of  so  hard  and  insen- 
sible a  constitution  of  body,  that  a  sound 
cudgelling  has  been  less  to  them  than  a  flirt 
with  a  finger  would  have  been  to  me,  and 
that  would  neither  cry  out,  wince,  nor  shrink, 
for  a  good  swinging  beating;  and  when 
wrestlers  counterfeit  the  philosophers  in 
patience,  'tis  rather  strength  of  nerves  than 
stoutness  of  heart,  ffow  to  be  inured  to  un- 
dergo labor,  is  to  be  accustomed  to  endure 
jfain : — 

" Labor  hardens  us  against  pain." 


MONTAIGNE  83 

A  boy  is  to  be  broken  in  to  the  toil  and 
roughness  of  exercise,  so  as  to  be  trained  up 
to  .the  pain  and  suffering  of  dislocations, 
colics,  cauteries,  and  even  imprisonment 
and  the  rack  itself;  for  he  may  come  by  mis- 
fortune to  be  reduced  to  the  worst  of  these, 
which  (as  this  world  goes)  is  sometimes  in- 
flicted on  the  good  as  well  as  the  bad.  As 
for  proof,  in  our  present  civil  war  whoever 
draws  his  sword  against  the  laws,  threatens 
the  honestest  men  with  the  whip  and  the 
halter. 

And,  moreover,  by  living  at  home,  the  au- 
thprity  of  this  governor,  which  ought  to  be 
sovereign  over  the  boy  he  has  received  into 
his  charge,  is  often  checked  and  hindered  by 
the  presence  of  parents;  to  which  may  also 
be  added,  that  the  respect  the  whole  family 
pay  him,  as  their  master's  son,  and  the 
knowledge  he  has  of  the  estate  and  greatness 
he  is  heir  to,  are,  in  my  opinion,  no  small  in- 
conveniences in  these  tender  years. 

And  yet,  even  in  this  conversing  with  men 
I  spoke  of  but  now,  I  have  observed  this 
vice,  that  instead  of  gathering  observations 
from  others,  we  make  it  our  whole  business  to 


84  MONTAIGNE 

lay  ourselves  open  to  them,  and  are  more 
concerned  how  to  expose  and  set  ont  our  own 
commodities,  than  how  to  increase  onr  stock 
(0  by  acquiring  new.  Silence,  therefore,  and 
modesty  are  very  advantageous  qualities  in 
conversation.  One  should,  therefore,  train 
up  this  boy  to  be  sparing  and  an  husband  of 
his  knowledge  when  he  has  acquired  it;  and 
to  forbear  taking  exceptions  at  or  reproving 
every  idle  saying  or  ridiculous  story  that  is 
said  or  told  in  his  presence;  for  it  is  a  very 
unbecoming  rudeness  to  carp  at  everything 
that  is  not  agreeable  to  our  own  palate.  Let 
himjje  satisfied  with  correcting  himself,  and 
not  seem  to  condemn  everything  in  another 


he  would  not  do  himself,  nor  dispute  it  as 
against  common  customs: — 

"Let  us  be  wise  without  ostentation,  with- 
out envy." 

Let  him  avoid  these  vain  and  uncivil  images 


of  authority,  this  childish  ambition  of  covet- 
ing to  appear  better  bred  and  more  accom- 
plished, than  he  really  will,  by  such  carriage, 
discover  himself  to  be.    And,  as  if  oppor- 


MONTAIGNE  85 

timities  of  interrupting  and  reprehending 
were  not  to  fee  omitted,  to  desire  thence  to 
derive  the  reputation  of  something  more  than 
ordinary.  For  as  it  becomes  none  but  great 
poets  to  make  use  of  the  poetical  license,  so 
it  is  intolerable  for  any  but  men  of  great  and 
illustrious  souls  to  assume  privilege  above 
the  authority  of  custom: — 

"If  Socrates  and  Aristippus  have  com- 
mitted any  act  against  manners  and  custom, 
let  him  not  think  that  he  is  allowed  to  do  the 
same;  for  it  was  by  great  and  divine  benefits 
that  they  obtained  this  privilege." 

Let  him  be  instructed  not  to  engage  in  dis- 
course or  dispute  but  with  a  champion 
worthy  of  him,  and,  even  there,  not  to  make 
use  of  all  the  little  subtleties  that  may  seem 
pat  for  his  purpose,  but  only  such  arguments 
as  may  best  serve  him.  Let  him  be  taught  to 
be  curious  in  the  election  and  choice  of  his 
reasons,  to  abominate  impertinence,  and  con- 
sequently, to  affect  brevity;  but,  above  all, 
let  him  be  lessoned  to  acquiesce  and  submit 
to  truth  so  soon  as  ever  he  shall  discover  it, 


86  MONTAIGNE 

whether  in  his  opponent's  argument,  or  upon 
better  consideration  of  his  own;  for  he  shall 
never  be  preferred  to  the  chair  for  a  mere 
clatter  of  words  and  syllogisms,  and  is  no 
further  engaged  to  any  argument  whatever, 
than  as  he  shall  in  his  own  judgment  approve 
it:  nor  yet  is  arguing  a  trade,  where  the 
liberty  of  recantation  and  getting  off  upon 
better  thoughts,  are  to  be  sold  for  ready 
money:— 

"Neither  is  he  driven  by  any  necessity,  that 
he  should  defend  all  things  that  are  pre- 
scribed and  enjoined  him." 

If  his  governor  be  of  my  humor,  he  will 
form  his  will  to  be  a  very  good  and  loyal 
subject  to  his  prince,  very  affectionate  to  his 
person,  and  very  stout  in  his  quarrel;  but 
withal  he  will  cool  in  him  the  desire  of  having 
"J)  any  other  tie  to  his  service  than  public  duty. 


Besides  several  other  inconveniences  that  are 
inconsistent  with  the  liberty  every  honest 
man  ought  to  have,  a  man's  judgment,  being 
bribed  and  prepossessed  by  these  particular 
obligations,  is  either  blinded  and  less  free  to 
exercise  its  function,  or  is  blemished  with 


MONTAIGNE  87 

ingratitude  and  indiscretion.  A  man  that  is 
purely  a  courtier,  can  neither  have  power 
nor  will  to  speak  or  think  otherwise  than 
favorably  and  well  of  a  master,  who, 
amongst  so  many  millions  of  other  subjects, 
has  picked  out  him  with  his  own  hand  to 
nourish  and  advance;  this  favor,  and  the 
profit  flowing  from  it,  must  needs,  and  not 
without  some  show  of  reason,  corrupt  his 
freedom  and  dazzle  him; and  we  commonly  see 
these  people  speak  in  another  kind  of  phrase 
than  is  ordinarily  spoken  by  others  of  the 
same  nation,  though  what  they  say  in  that 
courtly  language  is  not  much  to  be  believed. 
Let  his  conscience  and  virtue  be  eminently 
manifest  in  his  speaking,  and  have  only  rea- 
son for  their  guide.  Make  him  understand, 
that  to  acknowledge  the  error  he  shall  dis- 
coyer  in  his  own  argument,  though  only 
found  out  by  himself,  is  an  effect  of  judgment 
and  sincerity,  which  are  the  principal  things 
he  is  to  seek  after;  that  obstinacy  and  con- 
tention are  common  qualities,  most  appear- 
ing in  mean  souls;  that  to  revise  and  correct 
himself,  to  forsake  an  unjust  argument  in 
the  height  and  heat   of   dispute,   are   rare* 


88  MONTAIGNE 

great,  and  philosophical  qualities.    Let  him 


Abe  advised,  being  in  company,  to  have  his 
[1J,  eye  and  ear  in  every  corner;  for  I  find  that 
the  places  of  greatest  honor  are  commonly 
seized  upon  by  men  that  have  least  in  them, 
and  that  the  greatest  fortunes  are  seldom 
accompanied  with  the  ablest  parts.  I  have 
been  present  when,  whilst  they  at  the  upper 
end  of  the  chamber  have  been  only  comment- 
ing the  beauty  of  the  arras,  or  the  flavor  of 
the  wine,  many  things  that  have  been  very 
finely  said  at  the  lower  end  of  the  table  have 
been    lost     and    thrown    away.     Let    him 


examine  every  man's  talent;  a  peasant,  a 
bricklayer,  a  passenger:  one  may  learn  some- 
thing from  every  one  of  these  in  their  several 
capacities,  and  something  will  be  picked  out 
of  their  discourse  whereof  some  use  may  be 
made  at  one  time  or  another;  nay,  even  the 
folly  and  impertinence  of  others  will  con- 
tribute to  his  instruction.  By  observing  the 
graces  and  manners  of  all  he  sees,  he  will 
create,  to JhimseJf  ML.emulatioiL_oi . the.  good, 
and  a  contempt  of  the  bad. 
Let  an  honest  curiosity  be  suggested  to  his 
U  fancy  of  being  inquisitive  after  everything; 


MONTAIGNE  89 

whatever  there  is  singular  and  rare  near  the 
place  where  he  is,  let  him  go  and  see  it;  a 
fine  house,  a  noble  fountain,  an  eminent  man, 
the  place  where  a  battle  has  been  anciently 
fought,  the  passages  of  Caesar  and  Charle- 
magne : — 

"What  country  is  bound  in  frost,  what  land 
is  friable  with  heat,  what  wind  serves  fairest 
for  Italy.' ' 

Let  him  inquire  into  the  manners,  revenues, 
and  alliances  of  princes,  things  in  themselves 
very  pleasant  to  learn,  and  very  useful  to 
know. 

In  this  conversing  with  men,  I  mean  also, 
and  principally,  those  who  only  live  in  the 
records  of  history;  he  shall,  by  reading  those 
books,  converse  with  the  great  and  heroic 
souls  of  the  best  ages.  'Tis  an  idle  and  vain 
study  to  those  who  make  it  so  by  doing  it 
after  a  negligent  manner,  but  to  those  who  do 
it  with  care  and  observation,  'tis  a  study  of 
inestimable  fruit  and  value;  and  the  only 
study,  as  Plato  reports,  that  the  Lacedae- 
monians reserved  to  themselves.  What  profit 
shall  he  not  reap  as  to  the  business  of  men, 


X 


90  MONTAIGNE 

by  reading  the  Lives  of  Plutarch?  But, 
withal,  let  my  governor  remember  to  what 
\d  atkj  frig  instructions  are  principally  directed, 
and  that  he  do  not  so  much  imprint  in  his 
pupil 's  memory  the  date  of  the  ruin  of 
Carthage,  as  the  manners  of  Hannibal  and 
Scipio;  nor  so  much  where  Marcellus  died,  as 
why  it  was  unworthy  of  his  duty  that  he  died 
there.  Let  him  not  teach  him  so  much  the 
narrative  parts  of  history  as  to  judge  them; 
the  reading  of  them,  in  my  opinion,  is  a  thing 
that  jrf  all  others  we  apply  ourselves  unto 
with  the  most  differing  measure.  I  have  read 
a  hundred  things  in  Livy  that  another  has 
not,  or  not  taken  notice  of  at  least;  and 
Plutarch  has  read  a  hundred  more  there  than 
ever  I  could  find,  or  than,  peradventure,  that 
author  ever  wrote;  to  some  it  is  merely  a 
grammar  study,  to  others  the  very  anatomy 
of  philosophy,  by  which  the  most  abstruse 
parts  of  our  human  nature  penetrate.  There 
are  in  Plutarch  many  long  discourses  very 
worthy  to  be  carefully  read  and  observed, 
for  he  is,  in  my  opinion,  of  all  others  the 
greatest  master  in  that  kind  of  writing;  but 
there  are  a  thousand  others  which  he  has  only 


MONTAIGNE  91 

touched  and  glanced  upon,  where  he  only 
points  with  his  finger  to  direct  us  which  way 
we  may  go  if  we  will,  and  contents  himself 
sometimes  with  giving  only  one  brisk  hit  in 
the  nicest  article  of  the  question,  whence  we 
are  to  grope  out  the  rest.  As,  for  example, 
where  he  says  that  the  inhabitants  of  Asia 
came  to  be  vassals  to  one  only,  for  not  having 
been  able  to  pronounce  one  syllable,  which 
is  No.  Which  saying  of  his  gave  perhaps 
matter  and  occasion  to  La  Boetie  to  write  his 
"Voluntary  Servitude.''  Only  to  see  him 
pick  out  a  light  action  in  a  man's  life,  or  a 
mere  word  that  does  not  seem  to  amount  even 
to  that,  is  itself  a  whole  discourse.  'Tis  to 
our  prejudice  that  men  of  understanding 
should  so  immoderately  affect  brevity;  no 
doubt  their  reputation  is  the  better  by  it,  but 
in  the  meantime  we  are  the  worse.  Plutarch 
had  rather  we  should  applaud  his  judgment 
than  commend  his  knowledge,  and  had  rather 
leave  us  with  an  appetite  to  read  more,  than 
glutted  with  that  we  have  already  read.  He 
knew  very  well,  that  a  man  may  say  too 
much  even  upon  the  best  subjects,  and  that 
Alexandridas    justly   reproached   him    who 


92  MONTAIGNE 

made  very  good  but  too  long  speeches  to  the 
Ephori,  when  he  said:  "0  stranger-  thou 
speakest  the  things  thou  shouldst  speak,  but 
not  as  thou  shouldst  speak  them."  Such  as 
have  lean  and  spare  bodies  stuff  themselves 
out  with  clothes:  so  they  who  are  defective 
in  matter  endeavor  to  make  amends  with 
words. 

Human  understanding  is  mflrvftllonsly  nn- 
lightened  by  daily  conversation  with  men, 
for  we  are,  otherwise,  compressed  and  heaped 
up  in  ourselves,  and  have  our  sight  limited 
to  the  length  of  our  own  noses.  One  asking 
Socrates  of  what  country  he  was,  he  did  not 
make  answer,  of  Athens,  but  of  the  world;  he 
whose  imagination  was  fuller  and  wider,  em- 
braced the  whole  world  for  his  country,  and 
extended  his  society  and  friendship  to  all 
mankind;  not  as  we  do,  who  look  no  further 
than  our  feet.  When  the  vines  of  my  village 
are  nipped  with  the  frost,  my  parish  priest 
presently  concludes,  that  the  indignation  of 
God  is  gone  out  against  all  the  human  race, 
and  that  the  cannibals  have  already  got  the 
pip.  Who  is  it  that,  seeing  the  havoc  of 
these  civil  wars  of  ours,  does  not  cry  out,  that 


MONTAIGNE  93 

the  machine  of  the  world  is  near  dissolution, 
and  that  the  day  of  judgment  is  at  hand; 
without  considering,  that  many  worse  things 
have  been  seen,  and  that  in  the  meantime, 
people  are  very  merry  in  a  thousand  other 
parts  of  the  earth  for  all  this?  For  my  part, 
considering  the  license  and  impunity  that 
always  attend  such  commotions,  I  wonder 
they  are  so  moderate,  and  that  there  is  no 
more  mischief  done.  To  him  who  feels  the 
hailstones  patter  about  his  ears,  the  whole 
hemisphere  appears  to  be  in  storm  and 
tempest;  like  the  ridiculous  Savoyard,  who 
said  very  gravely,  that  if  that  simple  king 
of  France  could  have  managed  his  fortune  as 
he  should  have  done,  he  might  in  time  have 
come  to  have  been  steward  of  the  household 
to  the  duke  his  master:  the  fellow  could  not, 
in  his  shallow  imagination,  conceive  that 
there  could  be  anything  greater  than  a  Duke 
of  Savoy.  And,  in  truth,  we  are  all  of  us, 
insensibly,  in  this  error,  an  error  of  a  very 
great  weight  and  very  pernicious  conse- 
quence. But  whoever  shall  represent  to  his 
fancy,  as  in  a  picture,  that  great  image  of  our 
mother  nature,  in  her  full  majesty  and  lustre, 


A 


vv, 


94  MONTAIGNE 

whoever  in  her  face  shall  read  so  general  _and 
so  constant  a  variety,  whoever  shall  observe 
himself  in  that  figure,  and  not  himself  baL- 
a-  whole  kingdom,  no  bigger  than,  the  least — 

touch  or  prick  of  a  pencil  in  comparison  of 

the  whole,  that  man  alone  is  able  to  y*^1™ 
things  according  to  their  trufr  flBJaMJM  Ittd  — 
grandeur. 


This  great  world  which  some  do  yet  multi- 
ply, as  several  species  under  one  genus,  is  the 
mirror  wherein  we  are  to  behold  ourselves, 
to  be  able  to  know  ourselves  as  we  ought  to 
do  in  the  true  bias.  In  short,  I  would  have 
this  to  be  the  book  my  young  gentleman 
should  study  with  the  most  attention.  So 
many  humors,  so  many  sects,  so  many  judg- 
ments, opinions,  laws,  and  customs,  teach  us 
to  judge  aright  of  our  own,  and  inform  our 
understanding  to  discover  its  imperfection 
and  natural  infirmity,  which  is  no  trivial 
speculation.  So  many  mutations  of  states 
and  kingdoms,  and  so  many  turns  and  revo- 
lutions of  public  fortune,  will  make  us  wise 
enough  to  make  no  great  wonder  of  our  own. 
So  many  great  names,  so  many  famous  vic- 
tories and  conquests  drowned  and  swallowed 


MONTAIGNE  95 

in  oblivion,  render  our  hopes  ridiculous  of 
eternising  our  names  by  the  taking  of  half- 
a-score  of  light  horse,  or  a  henroost,  which 
only  derives  its  memory  from  its  ruin.  The 
pride  and  arrogance  of  so  many  foreign 
pomps,  the  inflated  majesty  of  so  many  courts 
and  grandeurs,  accustom  and  fortify  our 
sight  without  closing  our  eyes  to  behold  the 
lustre  of  our  own;  so  many  trillions  of  men, 
buried  before  us,  encourage  us  not  to  fear  to 
go  seek  such  good  company  in  the  other 
world:  and  so  of  the  rest.  Pythagoras  was 
wont  to  say,  that  our  life  resembles  the  great 
and  populous  assembly  of  the  Olympic  games, 
wherein  some  exercise  the  body,  that  they 
may  carry  away  the  glory  of  the  prize:  others 
bring  merchandise  to  sell  for  profit :  there  are 
also  some  (and  those  none  of  the  worst  sort) 
who  pursue  no  other  advantage  than  only  to 
look  on,  and  consider  how  and  why  every- 
thing is  done,  and  to  be  spectators  of  the  lives 
of  other  men,  thereby  the  better  to  judge  of 
and  regulate  their  own. 

To  examples  may  fitly  be  applied  all  the 
profitable  discourses  of  philosophy,  to  which 
all  human  actions,  as  to  their  best  rule,  ought 


96  MONTAIGNE 

to  be  especially  directed:  £.  scholar  shall  be 
taught  to  know: 

"What  we  are,  and  to  what  life  we  are  be- 
gotten; what  it  is  right  to  wish;  what  is  the 
use  of  new  money;  how  much  it  becomes  us 
to  give  to  our  country  and  dear  kindred; 
whom  the  Deity  has  commanded  thee  to  be; 
and  in  what  human  part  thou  art  placed." 

what  it  is  to  know,  and  what  to  be  ignorant; 
what  ought  to  be  the  end  and  design  of  study; 
what  valor,  temperance,  and  justice  are;  the 
difference  betwixt  ambition  and  avarice, 
servitude  and  subjection,  license  and  liberty; 
by  what  token  a  man  may  know  true  and 
solid  contentment;  how  far  death,  affliction, 
and  disgrace  are  to  be  apprehended: 

"And  how  you  may  shun  or  sustain  every 
hardship ;" 

by  what  secret  springs  we  move,  and  the  rea- 
son of  our  various  agitations  and  irresolu- 
tions: for,  methinks  the  first  doctrine  with 


/.r\  which  one  should  season  his  understanding, 

oughtrio  be  that  which  regulates  his  manners 
and  his  sense :  that  teaches  him  to  know  him* 


MONTAIGNE  97 

sqlf,  and  how  both  well  to  die  and  well  to 
live.  Amongst  the  liberal  sciences,  let  us  be- 
gin with  that  which  makes  ns  free;  not  that 
they  do  not  all  serve  in  some  measure  to  the 
instruction  and  nse  of  life,  as  all  other 
things  in  some  sort  also  do;  but  let  ns  make 
choice  of  that  which  directly  and  professedly 
serves  to  that  end.  If  we  are  once  able  to 
restrain  the  offices  of  human  life  within  their 
just  and  natural  limits,  we  shall  find  that 
most  of  the  sciences  in  use  are  of  no  great 
use  to  us,  and  even  in  those  that  are,  that 
there  are  many  very  unnecessary  cavities 
and  dilatations  which  we  had  better  let  alone, 
and,  following  Socrates'  direction,  limit  the 
course  of  our  studies  to  those  things  only" 
where  is  a  true  and  real  utility: — 

"Dare  to  be  wise;  begin!  he  who  defers  the 
hour  of  living  well  is  like  the  clown,  waiting 
till  the  river  shall  have  flowed  out:  but  the 
river  still  flows,  and  will  flow  for  ever." 

'Tis  a  great  foolery  to  teach  our  chil- 
dren : — 

"What  influence  Pisces  have,  or  the  sign 


98  MONTAIGNE 

of  angry  Leo,  or  Capricorn,  washed  by  the 
Hesperian  wave;" 

the  knowledge  of  the  stars  and  the  motion  of 
the  eighth  sphere  before  their  own: — 

"What  care  I  about  the  Pleiades  or  the 
stars  of  Taurus  I" 

Anaximenes  writing  to  Pythagoras,  "To 
what  purpose,"  said  he,  "should  I  trouble 
myself  in  searching  out  the  secrets  of  the 
stars,  having  death  or  slavery  continually 
before  my  eyes?"  for  the  kings  of  Persia 
were  at  that  time  preparing  to  invade  his 
country.  Every  one  ought  to  say  thus,  "Be- 
ing assaulted,  as  I  am  by  ambition,  avarice, 
temerity,  superstition,  and  having  within  so 
many  other  enemies  of  life,  shall  I  go  ponder 
over  the  world's  changes f  " 

After  having  taught  him  what  will  make 
him  more  wise  and  good,  you  may  then  en- 
tertain him  with  the  elements  of  logic, 
physics,  geometry,  rhetoric,  and  the  science 
which  he  shall  then  himself  most  incline  to, 
his  judgment  being  beforehand  formed  and 
fit  to  choose,  he  will  quickly  make  his  own. 


MONTAIGNE  99 

The  way  of  instructing  him  ought  to  be  some- 
times by  discourse,  and  sometimes  by  read- 
ing; sometimes  his  governor  shall  put  the 
author  himself,  which  he  shall  think  most 
pepper  for  him j  into  his  hands,  and  some- 
fimno  ™iiy  fjjo  marrow  and  substance  of  it; 
and  if  hjmsplf  bp  not  r>rmvprsant  enough  in 
books  to  turn  to  all  the  fine  discourses  the 
books  contain  for  his  purpose,  there  may 
some  man  of  learning  be  joined  to  him,  that 
upon  every  occasion  shall  supply  him  with 
what  he  stands  in  need  of,  to  furnish  it  to 
his  pupil.  And  who  can  doubt  but  that  this 
way  of  teaching  is  much  more  easy  and 
natural  than  that  of  Gaza,  in  which  the  pre- 
cepts are  so  intricate,  and  so  harsh,  and  the 
words  so  vain,  lean,  and  insignificant,  that 
there  is  no  hold  to  be  taken  of  them,  nothing 
that  quickens  and  elevates  the  wit  and  fancy, 
whereas  here  the  mind  has  what  to  feed  upon 
and  to  digest.  This  fruit,  therefore,  is  not 
only  without  comparison,  much  more  fair  and 
beautiful;  but  will  also  be  much  more  early 
ripe. 

'Tis  a  thousand  pities  that  matters  should 
be  at  such  a  pass  in  this  age  of  ours,  that 


if 


100  MONTAIGNE 

philosophy,  even  with  men  of  understanding, 
should  be  looked  upon  as  a  vain  and  fantastic 
name,  a  thing  of  no  use,  no  value,  either  in 
opinion  or  effect,  of  which  I  think  those 
ergotisms  and  petty  sophistries,  by  prepos- 
sessing the  avenues  to  it,  are  the  cause.  And 
people  are  much  to  blame  to  represent  it  to 
children  for  a  thing  of  so  difficult 
access,  and  with  such  a  frowning, 
grim,  and  formidable  aspect..  "Who  is 
it  that  has  disguised  it  thus,  with  this 
false,  pale,  and  ghostly  countenance1?  There 
is  nothing  more  airy,  more  gay,  more  frolic, 
and  I  had  like  to  have  said,  more  wanton. 
She  preaches  nothing  but  feasting  and  jollity; 
a  melancholic  anxious  look  shows  that  she 
does  not  inhabit  there.  Demetrius  the  gram- 
marian finding  in  the  temple  of  Delphos  a 
knot  of  philosophers  set  chatting  together, 
said  to  them,  "Either  I  am  much  deceived, 
or  by  your  cheerful  and  pleasant  coun- 
tenances, you  are  engaged  in  no  very  deep 
discourse."  To  which  one  of  them,  Hera- 
cleon  the  Megarean,  replied:  "  'Tis  for  such 
as  are  puzzled  about  inquiring  whether  the 
future  tense  of  the  verb  Ballo  be  spelt  with 


MONTAIGNE  101 

a  double  L,  or  that  hunt  after  the  derivation 
of  the  comparatives  Cheirou  and  Beltiou,  and 
the  superlatives  Cheiriotou  and  Beliotou, 
to  knit  their  brows  whilst  discoursing  of 
their  science;  but  as  to  philosophical  dis- 
courses, they  always  divert  and  cheer  up 
those  that  entertain  them,  and  never  deject 
them  or  make  them  sad:" — 


"How  charming  is  divine  philosophy! 
Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose ; 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute." 

"You  may  discern  the  torments  of  mind 
lurking  in  a  sick  body;  you  may  discern  its 
joys:  either  expression  the  face  assumes 
from  the  mind." 


The  soul  that  lodges  philosophy,  ought  to 
be  of  such  a  constitution  of  health,  as  to  ren- 
der the  body  in  like  manner  healthful  too; 
she  ought  to  make  her  tranquillity  and  satis- 
faction shine  so  as  to  appear  without,  and 
her  contentment  ought  to  fashion  the  out- 
ward behavior  to  her  own  mold,  and  con- 
sequently to  fortify  it  with  a  graceful  con- 
fidence, an  active  and  joyous  carriage,  and 


102  MONTAIGNE 

a  serene  and  contented  countenance.  .The 
most  manifest  siffn  of  wisdom  is  a  continual 
cheerfulness;  her  state  is  like  that  of  things 
in  the  regions  above  the  moon,  always  clear 
and  serene.  'Tis  Baroco  and  Baralipton  that 
render  their  disciples  so  dirty  and  ill- 
favored,  and  not  she;  they  do  not  so  much  as 
know  her  but  by  hearsay.  What!  It  is  she 
that  calms  and  appeases  the  storms  and 
tempests  of  the  soul,  and  who  teaches  famine 
and  fevers  to  laugh  and  sing;  and  that,  not 
by  certain  imaginary  epicycles,  but  by 
natural  and  manifest  reasons.  She  has  virtue 
for  her  end,  which  is  not,  as  the  schoolmen 
say,  situate  upon  the  summit  of  a  perpen- 
dicular, rugged,  inaccessible  precipice:  such 
as  have  approached  her  find  her,  quite  on  the 
contrary,  to  be  seated  in  a  fair,  fruitful,  and 
flourishing  plain,  whence  she  easily  discovers 
all  things  below;  to  which  place  any  one  may, 
however,  arrive,  if  he  know  but  the  way, 
through  shady,  green,  and  sweetly-flourishing 
avenues,  by  a  pleasant,  easy,  and  smooth 
descent,  like  that  of  the  celestial  vault.  'Tis 
for  not  having  frequented  this  supreme,  this 
beautiful,    triumphant,    and    amiable,    this 


MONTAIGNE  103 

equally  delicious  and  courageous  virtue,  this 
so  professed  and  implacable  enemy  to 
anxiety,  sorrow,  fear,  and  constraint,  who, 
having  nature  for  her  guide,  has  fortune  and 
pleasure  for  her  companions,  that  they  have 
gone,  according  to  their  own  weak  imagina- 
tion, and  created  this  ridiculous,  this  sorrow- 
ful, querulous,  despiteful,  'threatening,  ter- 
rible image  of  it  to  themselves  and  others, 
and  placed  it  upon  a  rock  apart,  amongst 
thorns  and  brambles,  and  made  of  it  a  hob- 
goblin to  affright  people. 

But  the  governor  that  I  would  have,  that 

n  —  ■      '  ■  * 

is  such  a  one  as  knows  it  to  be  his  duty  to 
possess  his  pupil  with  as  much  or  more 
affection  than  reverence  to  virtue,  will  be 
able  to  inform  him,  that  the  poets  have  ever- 
more accommodated  themselves  to  the  public 
humor,  and  make  him  sensible,  that  the  gods 
have  planted  more  toil  and  sweat  in  the 
avenues  of  the  cabinets  of  Venus  than  in 
those  of  Minerva.  And  when  he  shall  once 
find  him  begin  to  apprehend,  and  shall  repre- 
sent to  him  a  Bradamante  or  an  Angelica  for 
a  mistress,  a  natural,  active,  generous,  and 
not  a  viragoish,  but  a  manly  beauty,  in  com- 


104  MONTAIGNE 

parison  of  a  soft,  delicate,  artificial  simper- 
ing, and  affected  form;  the  one  in  the  habit 
of    a    heroic    youth,    wearing    a    glittering 
helmet,  the  other  tricked  up  in  curls  and  rib- 
bons like  a  wanton  minx;  he  will  then  look 
upon  his  own  affection  as  brave  and  mascu- 
line, when  he  shall  choose  quite  contrary  to 
that  effeminate  shepherd  of  Phrygia. 
Such  a  tutor  will  make  a  pupil  digest  this 
|4f)  new  lesson,  that  the  height  and  value  of  true 
viz  virtue  consists  in  the  facility,  utility,    and 
pleasure  of  its  exercise;  so  far  from  difficulty, 
that  boys,  as  well  as  men,  and  the  innocent  as 
well  as  the  subtle,  may  make  it  their  own; 
it  is  by  order,  and  not  by  force,  that  it  is  to 
be  acquired.    Socrates,  her  first  minion,  is  so 
averse  to  all  manner  of  violence,  as  totally 
to  throw  it  aside,  to  slip  into  the  more  natural 
facility  of  her  own  progress ;  'tis  the  nursing 
mother  of  all  human  pleasures,  who  in  ren- 
dering them  just,  renders  them  also  pure  and 
permanent;  in  moderating  them,  keeps  them 
in  breath  and  appetite;  in  interdicting  those 
which  she  herself  refuses,  whets  our  desire 
to  those  that  she  allows;  and,  like  a  kind  and 
liberal  mother,  abundantly  allows  all  that 


MONTAIGNE  105 

nature  requires,  even  to  satiety,  if  not  to  las- 
situde; unless  we  mean  to  say  that  the 
regimen  which  stops  the  toper  before  he  has 
drunk  himself  drunk,  the  glutton  before  he 
has  eaten  to  a  surfeit,  and  the  lecher  before 
he  has  got  the  pox,  is  an  enemy  to  pleasure. 
If  the  ordinary  fortune  fail,  she  does  without 
it,  and  forms  another,  wholly  her  own,  not  so 
fickle  and  unsteady  as  the  other.  She  can  be 
rich,  be  potent  and  wise,  and  knows  how  to 
lie  upon  soft  perfumed  beds:  she  loves  life, 
beauty,  glory,  and  health;  but  her  proper  and 
peculiar  office  is  to  know  how  to  regulate  the 
use  of  all  these  good  things,  and  how  to  lose 
them  without  concern:  an  office  much  more 
noble  than  troublesome,  and  without  which 
the  whole  course  of  life  is  unnatural,  turbu- 
lent, and  deformed,  and  there  it  is  indeed, 
that  men  may  justly  represent  those  monsters 
upon  rocks'  and  precipices. 

If  this  pupil  shall  happen  to  be  of  so  con- 
trary a  disposition,  that  he  had  rather  hear 
a  tale  of  a  tub  than  the  true  narrative  of  some 
noble  expedition  or  some  wise  and  learned 
discourse;  who  at  the  beat  of  drum,  that  ex- 
cites the  youthful  ardor  of  his  companions, 


106  MONTAIGNE 

leaves  that  to  follow  another  that  calls  to  a 
morris  or  the  bears;  who  would  not  wish, 
and  find  it  more  delightful  and  more  excel- 
lent, to  return  all  dust  and  sweat  victorious 
from  a  battle,  than  from  tennis  or  from  a  ball, 
with  the  prize  of  those  exercises;  I  see  no 
other  remedy,  but  that  he  be  bound  prentice 
in  some  good  town  to  learn  to  make  minced 
pies,  though  he  were  the  son  of  a  duke;  ac- 
cording to  Plato's  precept,  thaj;  children  are 
to  be  placed  out  and  disposed  of,  not  accord- 
ing  to  the  wealth,  qualities,  or  condition  of 
tlie  father,  but  according  to  the  faculties  and 

the  capacity  of  their  own  souls. 

Since  philosophy  is  that  which  instructs  us 
to  Jive,  and  that  infancy  has  there  its  lessons 
as  well  as  other  ages,  why  is  it  not  communi- 
cated to  children  betimes! — 

"The  clay  is  moist  and  soft:  now,  now 
make  haste,  and  form  the  pitcher  on  the 
rapid  wheel." 

Thev  begin  to  teach  us  to  live  when  we 
have  almost  done  living.  A  hundred  students 
have  got  the  pox  before  they  have  come  to 
read    Aristotle's    lecture    on    temperance. 


MONTAIGNE  107 

Cicero  said,  that  though  he  should  live  two 
men's  ages,  he  should  never  find  leisure  to 
study  the  lyric  poets;  and  I  find  these 
sophisters  yet  more  deplorably  unprofitable. 
The  boy  we  would  breed  has  a  great  deal  less 
time  to  spare;  he  owes  but  the  first  fifteen  or 
sixteen  years  of  his  life  to  education;  the  re- 
mainder is  due  to  action.  Let  us,  therefore, 
employ  that  short  time  in  necessary  instmc- 
tion.  Away  with  the  thorny  subtleties  of 
dialectics;  they  are  abuses,  things  by  which 
our  lives  can  never  be  amended:    take   the 


plain  philosophical  discourses,  learn  how 
rightly  to  choose,  and  then  rightly  to  apply 
them;  they  are  more  easy  to  be  understood 
than  one  of  Boccaccio's  novels;  a  child  from 
nurse  is  much  more  capable  of  them,  than 
of  learning  to  read  or  to  write.  Philosophy 
has  discourses  proper  for  childhood,  as  well 
as  for  the  decrepit  age  of  men. 

I  am  of  Plutarch's  mind,  that  Aristotle  did 
not  so  much  trouble  his  great  disciple  with 
the  knack  of  forming  syllogisms,  or  with  the 
elements  of  geometry,  as  with  infusing  into 
him  good  precepts  concerning  valor, 
prowess,  magnanimity,  temperance,  and  the 


108  MONTAIGNE 

contempt  of  fear;  and  with  this  ammunition, 
sent  him,  whilst  yet  a  boy,  with  no  more  than 
thirty  thousand  foot,  four  thousand  horse, 
and  but  forty-two  thousand  crowns,  to  sub- 
jugate the  empire  of  the  whole  earth.  For 
the  other  acts  and  sciences,  he  says,  Alexan- 
der highly  indeed  commended  their  excel- 
lence and  charm,  and  had  them  in  very  great 
honor  and  esteem,  but  not  ravished  with 
them  to  that  degree  as  to  be  tempted  to  affect 
the  practice  of  them  in  his  own  person: — 

"Seek  hence,  young  men  and  old  men,  a 
certain  end  to  the  mind,  and  a  viaticum  for 
miserable  gray  hairs." 

Epicurus,  in  the  beginning  of  his  letter  to 
Meniceus,  says,  "That  neither  the  youngest 
should  refuse  to  philosophize,  nor  the  oldest 
grow  weary  of  it."  Who  does  otherwise, 
seems  tacitly  to  imply,  that  either  the  time 
of  living  happily  is  not  yet  come,  or  that  it  is 
already  past.  And  yet,  for  all  that,  J  would 
not  have  this  pupil  of  ours  imprisoned  and 
madft  a  slave  to  his  book;  nor  would  I  have 
him  given  up  to  the  morosity  and  melancholic 
humor  of  a  sour  ill-natured  pedant;  I  would 


MONTAIGNE  109 

not  have  his  spirit  cowed  and  snbdned,  by  ap- 
plying him  to  the  rack,  and  tormenting  him, 
as  some  do,  fourteen  or  fifteen  honrs  a  day, 
and  so  make  a  pack-horse  of  him.  Neither 
should  I  think  it  good,  when,  by  reason  qfji 
solitary  and  melancholic  complexion,  he  is 
discovered  to  be  overmuch  addicted  to  his 
book,  to  nourish  that  humor  in  him;  for  that 
renders  him  unfit  for  civil  conversation,  and 
how  many  have  I  seen  in  my  time  totally 
brutified  by  an  immoderate  thirst  after 
knowledge?  Carneades  was  so  besotted  with 
it,  that  he  would  not  find  time  so  much  as  to 
comb  his  head  or  to  pare  his  nails.  Neither 
would  I  have  his  generous  manners  spoiled 
and  corrupted  by  the  incivility  and  barbarism 
of  those  of  another.    The  French  wisdom  was 


anciently  turned  into  proverb:  " Early,  T>uT 
^pf  no  continuance."  And,  in  truth,  we  yet 
see,  that  nothing  can  be  more  ingenious  and 
pleasing  than  the  children  of  France;  but 
they  ordinarily  deceive  the  hope  and  expecta- 
tion that  have  been  conceived  of  them;  and 
grown  up  to  be  men,  have  nothing  extraordi- 
nary or  worth  taking  notice  of:  I  have  heard 
men  of  good  understanding  say,  these  col- 


110  MONTAIGNE 

leges  of  ours  to  which  we  send  our  young 
people  (and  of  which  we  have  but  too  many) 
make  them  such  animals  as  they  are. 

But  to  our  little  monsieur,  a  closet,  a  gar- 
den, the  table,  his  bed,  solitude,  and  company, 
morning  and  evening,  all  hours  shall  be  the 
same,  and  all  places  to  him  a  study;  for 
philosophy,  who,  as  the  formatrix  of  judg- 
ment and  manners,  shall  be  his  principal  les- 
son, has  that  privilege  to  have  a  hand  in 
everything.  The  orator  Isocrates,  being  at  a 
feast  entreated  to  speak  of  his  art,  all  the 
company  were  satisfied  with  and  com- 
mended his  answer:  "It  is  not  now  a  time," 
said  he,  "to  do  what  I  can  do;  and  that  which 
it  is  now  time  to  do,  I  cannot  do."  For  to 
make  orations  and  rhetorical  disputes  in  a 
company  met  together  to  laugh  and  make 
good  cheer,  had  been  very  unseasonable  and 
improper,  and  as  much  might  have  been  said 
of  all  the  other  sciences.  But  as  to  what  con- 
cerns philosophy,  that  part  of  it  at  least  that 
treats  of  man,  and  of  his  offices  and  duties,  it 
fras  been  the  common  opinion  of  all  wise  men, 
that,  out  of  respect  to  the  sweetness  of  her 
conversation,  she  is  ever  to  be  admitted  in  all 


MONTAIGNE  111 

sports  and  entertainments.  And  Plato,  hav- 
ing invited  her  to  his  feast,  we  see  after  how 
gentle  and  obliging  a  manner,  accommodated 
both  to  time  and  place,  she  entertained  the 
company,  though  in  a  discourse  of  the  highest 
and  most  important  nature: — 

"It  profits  poor  and  rich  alike,  and,  neg- 
lected, will  equally  hurt  old  and  young." 

By,  this  method  of  instruction,  my  young 
pupil  will  be  much  more  and  better  employed 
than  his  fellows  of  the  college  are.  But  as 
the  steps  we  take  in  walking  to  and  fro  in  a 
gallery,  though  three  times  as  many,  do  not 
tire  a  man  so  much  as  those  we  employ  in  a 
formal  journey,  so  out  lesson,  as  it  were  ac- 
cidentally occurring,  without  any  set  obliga- 
tion of  time  or  place,  and  falling  naturally 
intcL  every  action,  will  insensibly  insinuate 
itself.  By  which  means  our  very  exercises 
and  recreations,  running,  wrestling,  music, 
dancing,  hunting,  riding,  and  fencing,  will 
prove  to  be  a  good  part  of  our  study.  I 
would  have  his  outward  fashion  and  mien, 
and  the  disposition  of  his  limbs,  formed  at 
the  same  time  with  his  mind.    'Tis-not  a  soul, 


112  MONTAIGNE 

'tis  not  a  body  that  we  are  training  up,  but 
a  man,  and  we  ought  not  to  divide  him.  And, 
as  Plato  says,  we  are  not  to  fashion  nnp  with- 
out the  other,,  but  make  them  draw  together 
like  two  horses  harnessed  to  a  coach.  By 
which  saying  of  his,  does  he  not  seem  to  allow 
more  time  for,  and  to  take  more  care  of  exer- 
cises for  the  body,  and  to  hold  that  the  mind, 
in  a  good  proportion,  does  her  business  at 
the  same  time  too? 

/      As  to  the  rest,  this  method  of  education 

Plight  to  be  carried  on  with  a  severe  sweety 
ness.  quite  contrary  to  the  practice  of  our 
pedants,  who,  instead  of  tempting  and  allur-, 
ing  children  to  letters  by  apt  and  gentle  ways, 
do  in  truth  present  nothing  before  them  but 
jods  and  ferules,  horror  and  cruelty.  Away 
with  this  violence,!  away  with  this  compul- 
sion !  than  which,  I  certainly  believe  nothing 
more  dulls  and  degenerates  a  well-descended 
nature.  If  you  would  have  him  apprehend 
shame  and  chastisement,  do  not  harden  him 
to  them:  inure  him  to  heat  and  cold,  to  wind 
and  sun,  and  to  dangers  that  he  ought  to 
4espise;  wean  him  from  all  effeminacy  and 
delicacy  in  clothes  and  lodging,  eating  and 


MONTAIGNE  113 

drinking;  accustom  him  to  everything  that 
he  may  not  be  a  Sir  Paris,  a  carpet-knight, 
but  a  sinewy,  hardy,  and  vigorous  young 
man.  I  have  ever  from  a  child  to  the  age 
wherein  I  now  am,  been  of  this  opinion,  and 
am  still  constant  to  it.  ftut  amongst  other 
things,  the  strict  government  of  most  of  our 
colleges  has  evermore  displeased  me;  per- 
adventure,  they  might  have  erred  less  perni- 
ciously on  the  indulgent  side.  'Tis  a  real 
house  of  correction  of  imprisoned  youth. 
They  are  made  debauched  by  being  punished 
before  they  are  so.  Ife  but  come  in  when 
they_  are  about  their  lesson,  and  you  shall 
hear  nothing  but  the  outcries  of  boys  under 
execution,  with  the  thundering  noise  of  their 
pedagogues  drunk  with  fury.  A  very  pretty 
way  this,  to  tempt  these  tender  and  timorous 
souls  to  love  their  book,  with  a  furious 
countenance,  and  a  rod  in  hand!  A  cursed 
and  pernicious  way  of  proceeding!  Besides 
what  Quintilian  has  very  well  observed,  that 
this  imperious  authority  is  often  attended  by 
very  dangerous  consequences,  and  particu- 
larly our  way  of  chastising.  How  much  more 
decent  would  it    be    to    see    their    classes 


114  MONTAIGNE 

strewed  with  green  leaves  and  fine  flowers, 
than  with  the  bloody  stumps  of  birch  and 
willows?  Were  it  left  to  my  ordering,  I 
should  paint  the  school  with  the  pictures  of 
joy  and  gladness;  Flora  and  the  Graces,  as 
the  philosopher  Speusippus  did  his.  Where 
their  profit  is,  let  them  there  have  their 
pleasure  too.  Such  viands  as  are  proper  and 
wholesome  for  children,  should  be  sweetened 
with  sugar,  and  such  as  are  dangerous  to 
them,  embittered  with  gall.  'Tis  marvellous 
to  see  how  solicitous  Plato  is  in  his  Laws  con- 
cerning the  gaiety  and  diversion  of  the  youth 
of  his  city,  and  how  much  and  often  he  en- 
larges upon  the  races,  sports,  songs,  leaps  and 
dances:  of  which,  he  says,  that  antiquity  has 
given  the  ordering  and  patronage  particu- 
larly to  the  gods  themselves,  to  Apollo, 
Minerva,  and  the  Muses.  He  insists  long 
upon,  and  is  very  particular  in,  giving  innum- 
erable precepts  for  exercises;  but  as  to  the 
lettered  sciences,  says  very  little,  and  only 
seems  particularly  to  recommend  poetry  upon 
the  account  of  music. 

All  singularity  in  our  manners  and  condi- 
tions is  to  be  avoided,  as  inconsistent  with 


MONTAIGNE  115 

civil  society.  Who  would  not  be  astonished 
at  so  strange  a  constitution  as  that  of  Demo- 
phoon,  steward  to  Alexander  the  Great,  who 
sweated  in  the  shade  and  shivered  in  the  sun? 
I  have  seen  those  who  have  run  from  the 
smell  of  a  mellow  apple  with  greater  precipi- 
tation than  from  a  harquebuss  shot;  others 
afraid  of  a  mouse;  others  vomit  at  the  sight 
of  cream;  others  ready  to  swoon  at  the  mak- 
ing of  a  feather  bed;  Germanicus  could 
neither  endure  the  sight  nor  the  crowing  of 
a  cock.  I  will  not  deny,  but  that  there  may, 
peradventure,  be  some  occult  cause  and 
natural  aversion  in  these  cases;  but,  in  my 
opinion,  a  man  might  conquer  it,  if  he  took 
it  in  time.  Precept  has  in  this  wrought  so 
effectually  upon  me,  though  not  without  some 
pains  on  my  part,  I  confess,  that  beer  ex- 
cepted, my  appetite  accommodates  itself  in- 
differently to  all  sorts  of  diet. 

Young  bodies  are  supple;  one  should, 
therefore,  in  that  age  bend  and  ply  thegLift 
all  fashions  and  customs:  and  provided  a 
man  can  contain  the  appetite  and  the  will 
within  their  due  limits,  let  a  young  man,  in 
God's  name,  be  rendered  fit  for  all  nations 


116  MONTAIGNE 

and  all  companies,  even  to  debauchery  and 
excess,  if  need  be;  that  is,  where  he  shall  do 
it  ont  of  complacency  to  the  cnstoms  of  the 
place.  Let  him  be  able  to  do  everything,  hut 
love  to  do  nothing  bnt  what  is  good.  The 
philosophers  themselves  do  not  justify  Callis- 
thenes  for  forfeiting  the  favor  of  his  master 
Alexander  the  Great,  by  refusing  to  pledge 
him  a  cup  of  wine.  Let  him  laugh,  play, 
wench  with  his  prince:  nay,  I  would  have 
him,  even  in  his  debauches,  too  hard  for  the 
rest  of  the  company,  and  to  excel  his  com- 
panions in  ability  and  vigor,  and  that  he 
may  not  give  over  doing  it,  either  through 
defect  of  power  or  knowledge  how  to  do  it, 
but  for  want  of  will: — 

"  There  is  a  vast  difference  betwixt  for- 
bearing to  sin,  and  not  knowing  how  to  sin." 

I  thought  I  passed  a  compliment  upon  a  lord, 
as  free  from  those  excesses  as  any  man  in 
France,  by  asking  him  before  a  great  deal 
of  very  good  company,  how  many  times  in 
his  life  he  had  been  drunk  in  Germany,  in 
the  time  of  his  being  there  about  his 
Majesty's  affairs;  which  he  also  took  as  it 


MONTAIGNE  117 

was  intended,  and  made  answer  "Three 
times;"  and  withal  told  us  the  whole  story 
of  his  debauches.  I  know  some  who,  for  want 
of  this  faculty,  have  found  a  great  incon- 
venience in  negotiating  with  that  nation.  I 
have  often  with  great  admiration  reflected 
upon  the  wonderful  constitution  of  Alci- 
biades,  who  so  easily  could  transform  him- 
self to  so  various  fashions  without  any 
prejudice  to  his  health;  one  while  outdoing 
the  Persian  pomp  and  luxury,  and  another, 
the  Lacedaemonian  austerity  and  frugality; 
as  reformed  in  Sparta,  as  voluptuous  in 
Ionia: — 

"Every  complexion  of  life,  and  station,  and 
circumstance  became  Aristippus." 

I  would  have  my  pupil  to  be  such  a  one: 

"I  shall  admire  him  whom  suffering  covers 
with  a  torn  cloak,  if  a  changed  fortune  be^ 
comes  him,  and  he  bears  both  parts  without" 
indecorum." 

These  are  my  lessons,  and  he  who  puts  them 
in  practice  shall  reap  more  advantage  than 
he  who  has  had  them  read  to  him  only,  and 


118  MONTAIGNE 

so  only  knows  them.  If  yon  see  him,  you 
hear  him;  if  yon  hear  him,  you  see  him.  God 
forbid,  says  one  in  Plato,  that  to  philosophize 
were  only  to  read  a  great  many  books,  and 
to  learn  the  arts. 

1 '  They  have  proceeded  to  this  discipline 
of  living  well^  which  of  all  arts  is  the  greatest, 
by  their  lives,  rather  than  by  their  reading. ' ' 

Leo,  prince  of  Phlius,  asking  Heraclides 
Ponticus  of  what  art  or  science  he  made  pro- 
fession :  "I  know, ' '  said  he, ' ' neither  art  nor 
science,  but  I  am  a  philosopher."  One  re- 
proaching Diogenes  that,  being  ignorant,  he 
should  pretend  to  philosophy:  "I  there- 
fore,' p  answered  he,  "pretend  to  it  with  so 
much  the  more  reason. ' '  Hegesias  entreated 
that  he  would  read  a  certain  book  to  him: 
"You  are  pleasant,"  said  he;  "you  choose 
those  figs  that  are  true  and  natural,  and  not 
those  that  are  painted;  why  do  you  not  also 
choose  exercises  which  are  naturally  true, 
rather  than  those  written?" 

The  lad  will  not  so  much  get  his  lesson  by 
heart  as  he  will  practise  it:  he  will  repeat  it 
in  his  actions.  "We  shall  discover  IF  there  be 
prudence  in  his  exercises,  if  there  be  sincerity 


MONTAIGNE  119 

and  justice  in  his  deportment,  if  there  be 
jgrace  and  judgment  in  his  speaking;  if  there 
be  constancy  in  his  sickness;  if  there  be 
modesty  in  his  mirth,  temperance  in  his 
Measures,  order  in  his  domestic  economy,  in- 
difference in  his  palate,  whether  what  he  eats 
or  drinks  be  flesh  or  fish,  wine  or  water: — 

"Who  considers  his  own  discipline,  not  as 
a  vain  ostentation  of  science,  but  as  a  law  and 
role_oOit'e;  and  who  obeys  his  own  decree¥r 
and  the  jaws  he_has  prescribed  jQaJnaBL!! 

The  conduct  of  our  lives  is  the  true  mirror  of 
our  doctrine.  Zeuxidamus,  to  one  who  asked 
him,  why  the  Lacedaemonians  did  not  commit 
their  constitutions  of  chivalry  to  writing,  and 
deliver  them  to  their  young  men  to  read, 
made  answer,  that  it  was  because  they  would 
inure  them  to  action,  and  not  amuse  them 
with  words.  With  such  a  one,  after  fifteen 
or  sixteen  years*  study,  compare  one  of  our 
college  Latinists,  who  has  thrown  away  so 
much  time  in  nothing  but  learning  to  speak. 
The  world  is  nothing  but  babble;  and  I  hardly 
ever  yet  saw  that  man  who  did  not  rather 
prate  too  much,  than  speak  too  little.    And 


120  MONTAIGNE 

yet  half  of  our  age  is  embezzled  this  way: 
we  are  kept  four  or  five  years  to  learn  words 
only,  and  to  tack  them  together  into  clauses; 
as  many  more  to  form  them  into  a  long  dis- 
course, divided  into  four  or  five  parts;  and 
other  five  years,  at  least,  to  learn  succinctly 
to  mix  and  interweave  them  after  a  subtle 
and  intricate  manner:  leHis  leave  all  this  to 
those  who  make  a  profession  of  it. 

Going  one  day  to  Orleans,  I  met  in  that 
plain  on  this  side  Clery,  two  teachers  who 
were  coming  to  Bordeaux,  about  fifty  paces 
distant  from  one  another;  and,  a  good  way 
further  behind  them,  I  discovered  a  troop  of 
horse,  with  a  gentleman  at  the  head  of  them, 
who  was  the  late  Monsieur  le  Comte  de  la 
Rochefoucauld.  One  of  my  people  inquired  of 
the  foremost  of  these  masters  of  arts,  who 
that  gentleman  was  that  came  after  him;  he, 
having  not  seen  the  train  that  followed  after, 
and  thinking  his  companion  was  meant, 
pleasantly  answered,  "He  is  not  a  gentleman; 
he  is  a  grammarian;  and  I  am  a  logician." 
Now  we  who,  quite  contrary,  do  not  here  pre- 
tend to  breed  a  grammarian  or  a  logician,  but 
a,  gentleman,  let  us  leave  them  to  abuse  their 


MONTAIGNE  121 

leisure;  our  business  lies  elsewhere.  .Let 
but  our  pupil  be  well  furnished  with  things, 
words  will  follow  but  too  fast;  he  will  pull 
them  after  him  if  they  do  not  voluntarily  fol- 
low^ I  have  observed  some  to  make  excuses, 
that  they  cannot  express  themselves,  and  pre- 
tend to  have  their  fancies  full  of  a  great  many 
very  fine  things,  which  yet,  for  want  of  elo- 
quence, they  cannot  utter;  'tis  a  mere  shift, 
and  nothing  else.  Will  you  know  what  I 
think  of  it?  I  think  they  are  nothing  but 
shadows  of  some  imperfect  images  and  con- 
ceptions that  they  know  not  what  to  make  of 
within,  nor  consequently  bring  out;  they  do 
not  yet  themselves  understand  what  they 
would  be  at,  and  if  you  but  observe  how  they 
haggle  and  stammer  upon  the  point  of  par- 
turition, you  will  soon  conclude,  that  their 
labor  is  not  to  delivery,  but  about  concep- 
tion, and  that  they  are  but  licking  their  form- 
less embryo.  Fos^my  part,  I  hold,  and 
Sotsrates  commands  it,  that  whoever  has  in 
his  mind  a  sprightly  and  clear  imagination^ 
fate  will  express  it  well  enough  in  one  kind  of 
tongue  or  another,  and,  if  he  be  <?umhr  by 

,giffns:—       ,._ 


122  MONTAIGNE 

"And  the  words  will  not  reluctantly  follow 
the  thing  preconceived." 

And  as  another  as  poetically    says    in    his 
prose: — 

"When  things  have  taken  possession  of 
the  mind,  the  words  trip." 

and  this  other: — 

"The  things  themselves  carry  the  words 
with  them.'7 


He  knows  nothing  of  ablative,  conjunctive, 
substantive,  or  grammar,  no  more  than  his 
lackey,  or  a  fishwife  of  the  Petit  Pont;  and 
yet  these  will  give  you  a  bellyful  of  talk,  if 
you  will  hear  them,  and  peradventure  shall 
trip  as  little  in  their  language  as  the  best 
masters  of  art  in  France.  He  knows  no 
rhetoric,  nor  how  in  a  preface  to  bribe  the 
benevolence  of  the  courteous  reader;  neither 
does  he  care  to  know  it.  Indeed  all  this  fine 
decoration  of  painting  is  easily  effaced  by 
the  lustre  of  a  simple  and  blunt  truth;  these 
fine  flourishes  serve  only  to  amuse  the  vulgar, 
of  themselves  incapable  of  more  solid  and 
nutritive  diet,  as  Aper  very  evidently  dem- 


MONTAIGNE  123 

onstrates  in  Tacitus.  The  ambassadors  of 
Samos,  prepared  with  a  long  and  elegant 
oration,  came  to  Cleomenes,  king  of  Sparta, 
to  incite  him  to  a  war  against  the  tyrant 
Polycrates;  who,  after  he  had  heard  their 
harangue  with  great  gravity  and  patience, 
gave  them  this  answer:  "As  to  the  exordium, 
I  remember  it  not,  nor  consequently  the  mid- 
dle of  your  speech;  and  for  what  concerns 
your  conclusion,  I  will  not  do  what  you  de- 
sire;" a  very  pretty  answer  this,  methinks, 
and  a  pack  of  learned  orators  most  sweetly 
gravelled.  And  what  did  the  other  man  say? 
The  Athenians  were  to  choose  one  of  two 
architects  for  a  very  great  building  they  had 
designed;  of  these,  the  first,  a  pert  affected 
fellow,  offered  his  service  in  a  long  pre- 
meditated discourse  upon  the  subject  of  the 
work  in  hand,  and  by  his  oratory  inclined  the 
voices  of  the  people  in  his  favor;  but  the 
other  in  three  words:  "O  Athenians,  what 
this  man  says,  I  will  do."  When  Cicero  was 
in  the  height  and  heat  of  an  eloquent 
harangue,  many  were  struck  with  admira- 
tion; but  Cato  only  laughed,  saying,  "We 
have  a  mirth-making  consul."    Let  it  go  be- 


124  MONTAIGNE 

fore,  or  come  after,  a  good  sentence  or  a  thing 
well  said,  is  always  in  season;  if  it  neither 
snit  well  with  what  went  before,  nor  has 
mnch  coherence  with  what  follows  after,  it 
is  good  in  itself.  I  am  none  of  those  who 
think  that  good  rhyme  makes  a  good  poem. 
Let  him  make  short  long,  and  long  short  if 
he  will,  'tis  no  great  matter^f  there  be  in- 


vention, and  that  the  wit  and  .judgment  have 
well  performed  their  offices,  I  will  say,  here's 
a  good  poet,  but  an  ill  rhymer; — 

"Of  delicate  humor,  but  of  rugged  versi- 
fication.' ' 

Let  a  man,  says  Horace,  divest  his  work  of 
all  method  and  measure: — 

"Take  away  certain  rhythms  and 
measures,  and  make  the  word  which  was  first 
in  order  come  later,  putting  that  which 
should  be  last  first,  you  will  still  find  the 
scattered  remains  of  the  poet. ' ' 

He  will  never  the  more  lose  himself  for  that; 
the  very  pieces  will  be  fine  by  themselves. 
Menander's  answer  had  this  meaning,  who 
being  reproved  by  a  friend,  the  time  drawing 


MONTAIGNE  125 

on  at  which  he  had  promised  a  comedy,  that 
he  had  not  yet  fallen  in  hand  with  it:  "It  is 
made,  and  ready,"  said  he,  "all  but  the 
verses. "  Having  contrived  the  subject,  and 
disposed  the  scenes  in  his  fancy,  he  took 
little  care  for  the  rest,  ^nce  Ronsard  and 
Du^Bellay  have  given  reputation  to  our 
French  poesy,  every  little  dabbler,  for  aught 
I  see,  swells  his  words  as  high,  and  makes 
his  cadences  very  near  as  harmonious  as 

"He  has  more  sound  than  force." 

For  the  vulgar,  there  were  never  so  many 
poetasters  as  now;  hut  though  they  find  it  no 


hard  matter  to  imitate  their  rhyme,  they  yet 
fall  infinitely  short  of  imitating  the  rich  de- 
scriptions of  the  one,  and  the  delicate  inven- 
Jtjpn  of  the  other  of  these  masters. 

But  what  will  become  of  our  young  gen- 
tleman, if  he  be  attacked  with  the  sophistic 
subtlety  of  some  syllogism?  "A  ham  makes 
a  man  drink;  drink  quenches  thirst:  ergo  a 
ham  quenches  thirst!"  Why,  let  him  laugh 
at  it;  it  will  be  more  discretion  to  do  so, 
than  to  go  about  to  answer  it;  or  let  him 


126  MONTAIGNE 

borrow  this  pleasant  evasion  from  Aristip- 
pns:  "Why  should  I  trouble  myself  to  untie 
that,  which  bound  as  it  is,  gives  me  so  much 
trouble?"  One  offering  at  this  dialectic 
juggling  against  Cleanthes,  Chrysippus  took 
him  short,  saying,  ' '  Reserve  these  baubles  to 
play  with  children,  and  do  not  by  such  fool- 
eries divert  the  serious  thoughts  of  a  man  of 
years."    If  these  ridiculous  subtleties, 

"Contorta'et  aculeata  sophismata," 

as  Cicero  calls  them,  are  designed  to  possess 
him  with  an  untruth,  they  are  dangerous;  but 
if  they  signify  no  more  than  only  to  make  him 
laugh,  I  do  not  see  why  a  man  need  to  be 
fortified  against  them.  There  are  some  so 
ridiculous,  as  to  go  a  mile  out  of  their  way  to 
hook  in  a  fine  word: — 

"Who  do  not  fit  words  to  the  subject,  but 
seek  out  for  things  quite  from  the  purpose 
to  fit  the  words." 

And  as  another  says: — 

"Who  by  their  fondness  of  some  fine 
sounding  word,  may  be  tempted  to  some- 
thing they  had  no  intention  to  write." 


MONTAIGNE  127 

I  for  my  part  rather  bring  in  a  fine  sentence 


by  head  and  shoulders  to  fit  my  purpose,  than 
dizfirt  my  designs_„lo_  hunt  after  a  sentence. 
On  the  contrary,  words  are  to  serve,  and  to 
follow  a  man's  purpose;  and  let  Oascon  come 
jn^play  where  French  will  not  do.  I  would 
have  things  so  excelling,  and  so  wholly  pos- 
sessing the  imagination  of  him  that  hears, 
that  he  should  have  something  else  to  do, 
&an  to  think  of  words.  The  way  of  speak- 
ing that  I  love,  is  natural  and  plain,  the  same 
in  writing  as  in  speaking,  and  a^  sinewy  and 
muscular  way  of  expressing  »  nmn'p  p^lf, 
short  and  pithy,  not  so  elegant  and  artificial 
as  prompt  and  vehement: — 

"That  utterance  indeed  will  have  a  taste 
which  shall  strike  (the  ear);" 

rather  hard  than  wearisome;  free  from  affec- 
tation; irregular,  incontinuous,  and  bold; 
where  every  piece  makes  up  an  entire  body; 
not  like  a  pedant,  a 'preacher,  or  a  pleader, 
but  rather  a  soldier-like  style,  as  Suetonius 
calls  that  of  Julius  Caesar;  and  yet  I  see  no 
reason  why  he  should  call  it  so.  I  have  ever 
been  ready  to  imitate  the    negligent    garb, 


128  MONTAIGNE 

which  is  yet  observable  amongst  the  young 
men  of  onr  time,  to  wear  my  cloak  on  one 
shoulder,  my  cap  on  one  side,  a  stocking  in 
disorder,  which  seems  to  express  a  kind  of 
haughty  disdain  of  these  exotic  ornaments, 
and  a  contempt  of  the  artificial;  frut  I  find 
this  negligence  of  much  better  use  in  the  form 
of  speaking.  All  affectation,  particularly  in 
the  French  gaiety  and  freedom,  is  ungraceful 
in  a  courtier,  and  in  a  monarchy  every  gen- 
tleman ought  to  be  fashioned  according  to 
the  court  model;  for  which  reason,  an_ easy 


fth( 
nan 


d  natural  negligence  does  well.  I  no  more 
like  a  web  where  the  knots  and  seams  are  to 
be  seen,  than  a  fine  figure,  so  delicate,  that 
a  man  may  tell  all  the  bones  and  veins: — 

"Let  the  language  that  is  dedicated  to 
truth  be  plain  and  unaffected.77 

"Who  studies  to  speak  accurately,  that 
does  not  at  the  same  time  wish  to  perplex  his 
auditory?77 

That  eloquence  prejudices  the  subject  it 
would  advance,  that  wholly  attracts  us  to 
itself.    And  as  in  our*  outward  habit,  'tis  a 


MONTAIGNE  129 

ridiculous  effeminacy  to  distinguish  ourselves 
by  a  particular  and  unusual  garb  or  fashion; 
so  in  language,  to  study  new  phrases,  and  to 
affect  words  that  are  not  of  current  use,  pro- 
ceeds from  a  puerile  and  scholastic  ambition. 
May  I  be  bound  to  speak  no  other  language 
than  what  is  spoken  in  the  market-places  of 
Paris!  Aristophanes  the  grammarian  was 
quite  out,  when  he  reprehended  Epicurus  for 
his  plain  way  of  delivering  himself,  and  the 
design  of  his  oratory,  which  was  only  per- 
spicuity of  speech.  The  imitation  of  words, 
by  its  own  facility,  immediately  disperses 
itself  through  a  whole  people;  but  the  imita- 
tion of  inventing  and  fitly  applying  those 
words  is  of  a  slower  progress.  The  gen- 
erality of  readers,  for  having  found  a  like 
robe,  very  mistakingly  imagine  they  have  the 
same  body  and  inside  too,  whereas  force  and 
sinews  are  never  to  be  borrowed;  the  gloss 
and  outward  ornament,  that  is,  words  and 
elocution,  may.  Most  of  those  I  converse 
with,  speak  the  same  language  I  here  write; 
but  whether  they  think  the  same  thoughts  I 
cannot  say.  The  Athenians,  says  Plato,  study 
fulness    and    elegancy    of     speaking;     the 


130  MONTAIGNE 

Lacedaemonians  affect  brevity,  and  those  of 
Crete  to  aim  more  at  the  fecundity  of  con- 
ception than  the  fertility  of  speech;  and  these 
are  the  best.  Zeno  used  to  say  that  he  had 
two  sorts  of  disciples,  one  that  he  called 
students,  curious  to  learn  things,  and 
these  were  his  favorites;  the  other, 
pedants,  that  cared  for  nothing  but  words. 
Not  that  fine  speaking  is  not  a  very  good 
and  commendable  quality;  but  not  so  excel- 
lent and  so  necessary  as  some  would  make  it; 
and  I  am  scandalized  that  our  whole  life 
should  be  spent  in  nothing  else.  I  would 
first  understand  my  own  language,  and  that 
of  my  neighbors,  with  whom  most  of  my 
business  and  conversation  lies. 

No  doubt  but  Greek  and  Latin  are  very 
great  ornaments,  and  of  very  great  use,  but 
we  buy  them  too  dear.  I  will  here  discover 
one  way,  which  has  been  experimented  in  my 
own  person,  by  which  they  are  to  be  had  bet- 
ter cheap,  and  such  may  make  use  of  it  as 
will.  My  late  father  having  made  the  most 
precise  inquiry  that  any  man  could  possibly 
make  amongst  men  of  the  greatest  learning 
and  judgment,  of  an  exact  method  of  educa- 


MONTAIGNE  131 

tion,  was  by  them  cautioned  of  this  incon- 
venience then  in  use,  and  made  to  believe, 
that  the  tedious  time  we  applied  to  the  learn- 
ing of  the  tongues  of  them  who  had  them 
for  nothing,  was  the  sole  cause  we  could  not 
arrive  to  the  grandeur  of  soul  and  perfection 
of  knowledge,  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and 
Romans.  I  do  not,  however,  believe  that  to 
be  the  only  cause.  So  it  is,  that  the  expedient 
my  father  found  out  for  this  was,  that  in  my 
infancy,  and  before  I  began  to  speak,  he  com- 
mitted me  to  the  care  of  a  German,  who  since 
died  a  famous  physician  in  France,  totally 
ignorant  of  our  language,  and  very  well 
versed  in  Latin.  This  man,  whom  he  had 
sent  for  expressly,  and  who  was  paid  very 
highly,  had  me  continually  in  his  arms;  he 
had  with  him  also  joined  two  others,  of  in- 
ferior learning,  to  attend  me,  and  to  relieve 
him;  these  spoke  to  me  in  no  other  language 
but  Latin.  As  to  the  rest  of  his  household, 
it  was  an  inviolable  rule,  that  neither  him- 
self, nor  my  mother,  nor  valet,  nor  chamber- 
maid, should  speak  anything  in  my  company; 
but  such  Latin  words  as  each  one  had  learned 
to  chatter  with  me.    It  is  not  to  be  imagined 


132  MONTAIGNE 

how  great  an  advantage  this  proved  to  the 
whole  family;  my  father  and  my  mother  by 
this  means  learned  Latin  enough  to  under- 
stand it  perfectly  well,  and  to  speak  it  to  snch 
a  degree  as  was  sufficient  for  any  necessary 
use;  as  also  those  of  the  servants  did  who 
were  most  frequently  with  me.  In  short,  we 
Latined  it  at  such  a  rate,  that  it  overflowed 
to  all  the  neighboring  villages,  where  there 
yet  remain,  that  have  established  themselves 
by  custom,  several  Latin  appellations  of 
artisans  and  their  tools.  As  for  what  con- 
cerns myself,  I  was  above  six  years  of  age 
before  I  understood  either  French  or  Peri- 
gordin,  any  more  than  Arabic;  and  without 
art,  book,  grammar,  or  precept,  whipping,  or 
the  expense  of  a  tear,  I  had,  by  that  time, 
learned  to  speak  as  pure  Latin  as  my  master 
himself,  for  I  had  no  means  of  mixing  it  up 
with  any  other.  If,  for  example,  they  were 
to  give  me  a  theme  after  the  college  fashion, 
they  gave  it  to  others  in  French;  but  to  me 
they  were  to  give  it  in  bad  Latin,  to  turn  it 
into  that  which  was  good.  And  Nicolas 
Grouchy,  who  wrote  a  book  De  Comitiis 
Romanorum:  Guillaume  Guerente,  who  wrote 


MONTAIGNE  133 

a  comment  upon  Aristotle:  George  Buchanan, 
that  great  Scottish  poet:  and  Marc  Antoine 
Muret  (whom  both  France  and  Italy  have 
acknowledged  for  the  best  orator  of  his 
time),  my  domestic  tutors,  have  all  of  them 
often  told  me  that  I  had  in  my  infancy  that 
language  so  very  fluent  and  ready,  that  they 
were  afraid  to  enter  into  discourse  with  me. 
And  particularly  Buchanan,  whom  I  since 
saw  attending  the  late  Mareschal  de  Brissac, 
then  told  me,  that  he  was  about  to  write  a 
treatise  of  education,  the  example  of  which 
he  intended  to  take  from  mine;  for  he  was 
then  tutor  to  that  Comte  de  Brissac  who 
afterward  proved  so  valiant  and  so  brave  a 
gentleman. 

As  to  Greek,  of  which  I  have  quasi  no 
knowledge,  my  father  designed  to  have  it 
taught  me  by  art,  but  a  new  way,  and  by  way 
of  sport;  rolling  our  declensions  to  and  fro, 
after  the  manner  of  those  who,  by  certain 
games  of  tables,  learn  geometry  and  arith- 
metic. For  he,  amongst  other  rules,  had 
been  advised  to  make  me  relish  science  and 
duty  by  an  unforced  will,  and  of  my  own 
voluntary  motion,  and  to  educate  my 'soul  in 


134  MONTAIGNE 

all  liberty  and  delight,  without  any  severity 
or  constraint;  which  he  was  an  observer  of 
to  snch  a  degree,  even  of  superstition,  if  I 
may  say  so,  that  some  being  of  opinion  that 
it  troubles  and  disturbs  the  brains  of  children 
suddenly  to  wake  them  in  the  morning,  and 
to  snatch  them  violently  and  over-hastily 
from  sleep  (wherein  they  are  much  more 
profoundly  involved  than  we),  he  caused  me 
to  be  wakened  by  the  sound  of  some  musical 
instrument,  and  was  never  unprovided  of  a 
musician  for  that  purpose.  By  this  example 
you  may  judge  of  the  rest,  this  alone  being 
sufficient  to  recommend  both  the  prudence 
and  the  affection  of  so  good  a  father,  who  is 
not  to  be  blamed  if  he  did  not  reap  fruits 
answerable  to  so  exquisite  a  culture.  Of  this, 
two  things  were  the  cause:  first,  a  sterile  and 
improper  soil;  for,  though  I  was  of  a  strong 
and  healthful  constitution,  and  of  a  disposi- 
tion tolerably  sweet  and  tractable,  yet  I  was, 
withal,  so  heavy,  idle,  and  indisposed,  that 
they  could  not  rouse  me  from  my  sloth,  not 
even  to  get  me  out  to  play.  What  I  saw,  I 
saw  clearly  enough,  and  under  this  heavy 
complexion  nourished  a  bold  imagination  and 


MONTAIGNE  135 

opinions  above  my  age.  I  had  a  slow  wit 
that  wonld  go  no  faster  than  it  was  led;  a 
tardy  understanding,  a  languishing  inven- 
tion, and  above  all,  incredible  defect  of 
memory;  so  that,  it  is  no  wonder,  if  from 
all  these  nothing  considerable  could  be  ex- 
tracted. Secondly,  like  those  who,  impatient 
of  a  long  and  steady  cure,  submit  to  all  sorts 
of  prescriptions  and  recipes,  the  good  man 
being  extremely  timorous  of  any  way  fail- 
ing in  a  thing  he  had  so  wholly  set  his  heart 
upon,  suffered  himself  at  last  to  be  overruled 
by  the  common  opinions,  which  always  fol- 
low their  leader  as  a  flight  of  cranes,  and 
complying  with  the  method  of  the  time,  hav- 
ing no  more  those  persons  he  had  brought 
out  of  Italy,  and  who  had  given  him  the  first 
model  of  education,  about  him,  he  sent  me  at 
six  years  of  age  to  the  College  of  Guienne,  at 
that  time  the  best  and  most  flourishing  in 
France.  And  there  it  was  not  possible  to  add 
anything  to  the  care  he  had  to  provide  me  the 
most  able  tutors,  with  all  other  circum- 
stances of  education,  reserving  also  several 
particular  rules  contrary  to  the  college  prac- 
tice; but  so  it  was,  that  with  all  these  precau- 


136  MONTAIGNE 

tions,  it  was  a  college  still.  My  Latin  im- 
mediately grew  corrupt,  of  which  also  by  dis- 
continuance I  have  since  lost  all  manner  of 
use;  so  that  this  new  way  of  education  served 
me  to  no  other  end,  than  only  at  my  first 
coming  to  prefer  me  to  the  first  forms;  for  at 
thirteen  years  old,  that  I  came  out  of  the 
college,  I  had  run  through  my  whole  course 
(as  they  call  it),  and,  in  truth,  without  any 
manner  of  advantage,  that  I  can  honestly 
brag  of,  in  all  this  time. 

The  first  taste  which  I  had  for  books  came 
to  me  from  the  pleasure  in  reading  the  fables 
of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses;  for,  being  about 
seven  or  eight  years  old,  I  gave  up  all  other 
diversions  to  read  them,  both  by  reason  that 
this  was  my  own  natural  language,  the  easiest 
book  that  I  was  acquainted  with,  and  for  the 
subject,  the  most  accommodated  to  the 
capacity  of  my  age:  for  as  for  the  Lancelots 
du  Lac,  the  Amadis,  the  Huons  of  Bordeaux, 
and  such  farragos,  by  which  children  are 
amused,  I  had  never  so  much  as  heard  their 
names,  no  more  than  I  yet  know  what  they 
contain;  so  exact  was  the  discipline  wherein 
I  was  brought  up.  But  this  was  enough  to 


MONTAIGNE  137 

make  me  neglect  the  other  lessons  that  were 
prescribed  me;  and  here  it  was  infinitely  to 
my  advantage,  to  have  to  do  with  an  under- 
standing tutor,  who  very  well  knew  discreetly 
to  connive  at  this  and  other  truantries  of 
the  same  nature;  for  by  this  means  I  ran 
through  Virgil  'a  Aeneid,  and  then  Terence, 
and  then  Plautus,  and  then  some  Italian 
comedies,  allured  by  the  sweetness  of  the 
subject;  whereas  had  he  been  so  foolish  as 
to  have  taken  me  off  this  diversion,  I  do 
really  believe,  I  had  brought  away  nothing 
from  the  college  but  a  hatred  of  books,  as 
almost  all  our  young  gentlemen  do.  But  he 
carried  himself  very  discreetly  in  that  busi- 
ness, seeming  to  take  no  notice,  and  allow- 
ing me  only  such  time  as  I  could  steal  from 
my  other  regular  studies,  vrhich  whetted  my 
appetite  to  devour  those  books.  For  the 
chief  things  my  father  expected  from  their 
endeavors  to  whom  he  had  delivered  me  for 
education,  were  affability  and  good-humor; 
and,  to  say  the  truth,  my  manners  had  no 
other  vice  but  sloth  and  want  of  metal.  The 
fear  was  not  that  I  should  do  ill,  but  that  I 
should  do  nothing;    nobody   prognosticated 


138  MONTAIGNE 

that  I  should  be  wicked,  but  only  useless; 
they  foresaw  idleness,  but  no  malice;  and  I 
find  it  falls  out  accordingly.  The  complaints 
I  hear  of  myself  are  these:  "He  is  idle,  cold 
in  the  offices  of  friendship  and  relation,  and 
in  those  of  the  public,  too  particular,  too  dis- 
dainful."  But  the  most  injurious  do  not 
say,  "Why  has  he  taken  such  a  thing?  Why 
has  he  not  paid  such  a  one?"  but,  "Why 
does  he  part  with  nothing!  Why  does 
he  not  give!"  And  I  should  take  it  for 
a  favor  that  men  would  expect  from  me  no 
greater  effects  of  supererogation  than  these. 
But  they  are  unjust  to  exact  from  me  what 
I  do  not  owe,  far  more  rigorously  than  they 
require  from  others  that  which  they  do  owe. 
In  condemning  me  to  it,  they  efface  the  grati- 
fication of  the  action,  and  deprive  me  of  the 
gratitude  that  would  be  my  due  for  it; 
whereas  the  active  well-doing  ought  to  be  of 
so  much  the  greater  value  from  my  hands,  by 
how  much  I  have  never  been  passive  that 
way  at  all.  I  can  the  more  freely  dispose 
of  my  fortune  the  more  it  is  mine,  and  of  my- 
self the  more  I  am  my  own.  Nevertheless, 
if  I  were  good  at  setting  out  my  own  actions, 


MONTAIGNE  139 

I  could,  peradventure,  very  well  repel  these 
reproaches,  and  could  give  some  to  under- 
stand, that  they  are  not  so  much  offended, 
that  I  do  not  enough,  as  that  I  am  ahle  to  do 
a  great  deal  more  than  I  do. 

Yet  for  all  this  heavy  disposition  of  mine, 
my  mind,  when  retired  into  itself,  was  not 
altogether  without  strong  movements,  solid 
and  clear  judgments  about  those  objects  it 
could  comprehend,  and  could  also,  without 
any  helps,  digest  them;  but,  amongst  other 
things,  I  do  really  believe,  it  had  been  totally 
impossible  to  have  made  it  to  submit  by  vio- 
lence and  force.  Shall  I  here  acquaint  you 
with  one  faculty  of  my  youth?  I  had  great 
assurance  of  countenance,  and  flexibility  of 
voice  and  gesture,  in  applying  myself  to  any 
part  I  undertook  to  act:  for  before 

"The  next  from  the  eleventh  year  had 
scarcely  taken  hold  of  me," 

I  played  the  chief  parts  in  the  Latin  tragedies 
of  Buchanan,  Guerente,  and  Muret,  that  were 
presented  in  our  College  of  Guienne  with 
great  dignity:  now  Andreas  Goveanus,  our 
principal,  as  in  all  other  parts  of  his  charge, 


140  MONTAIGNE 

was,  without  comparison,  the  best  of  that 
employment  in  France;  and  I  was  looked 
upon  as  one  of  the  best  actors.  'Tis  an  exer- 
cise that  I  do  not  disapprove  in  young  people 
of  condition;  and  I  have  since  seen  our 
princes,  after  the  example  of  some  of  the 
ancients,  in  person  handsomely  and  com- 
mendably  perform  these  exercises;  it  was 
even  allowed  to  persons  of  quality  to  make 
a  profession  of  it  in  Greece: — 

"He  opened  the  matter  to  Aristo  the  tragi- 
cal actor;  he  was  of  an  honest  stock  and  for- 
tune; nor  did  the  art,  because  nothing  of  the 
kind  is  a  cause  of  shame  among  the  Greeks, 
discredit  him." 

Nay,  I  have  always  taxed  those  with  im- 
pertinence who  condemn  these  entertain- 
ments, and  with  injustice  those  who  refuse 
to  admit  such  comedians  as  are  worth  seeing 
into  our  good  towns,  and  grudge  the  people 
that  public  diversion.  Well-governed  cor- 
porations take  care  to  assemble  their  citizens, 
not  only  to  the  solemn  duties  of  devotion,  but 
also  to  sports  and  spectacles.  They  find  so- 
ciety and  friendship  augmented  by  it;  and 


MONTAIGNE  141 

besides,  can  there  possibly  be  allowed  a  more 
orderly  and  regular  diversion  than  what  is 
performed  in  the  sight  of  every  one,  and 
very  often  in  the  presence  of  the  supreme 
magistrate  himself?  And  I,  for  my  part, 
should  think  it  reasonable,  that  the  prince 
should  sometimes  gratify  his  people  at  his 
own  expense,  out  of  paternal  goodness  and 
affection;  and  that  in  populous  cities  there 
should  be  theatres  erected  for  such  enter- 
tainments, if  but  to  divert  them  from  worse 
and  private  actions. 

To  return  to  my  subject,  there  is  nothing 
like  alluring  the  appetite  and  affections; 
otherwise  you  make  nothing  but  so  many 
asses  laden  with  books;  by  dint  of  the  lash, 
you  give  them  their  pocketful  of  learning  to 
keep;  whereas,  to  do  well  you  should  not  only 
lodge  it  with  them,  but  make  them  espouse 
it. 


142  MONTAIGNE 

IT  IS  FOLLY  TO  REFER  TRUTH  AND 
ERROR  TO  OUR  OWN  CAPACITY 

'TIS  NOT,  perhaps,  without  reason,  that  we 
attribute  facility  of  belief  and  easiness  of  per- 
suasion to  simplicity  and  ignorance;  for  I 
fancy  I  have  heard  belief  compared  to  the 
impression  of  a  seal  upon  the  soul,  which  by 
how  much  softer  and  of  less  resistance  it  is, 
is  the  more  easy  to  be  impressed  upon: — 

"As  the  scale  of  the  balance  must  give  way 
to  the  weight  that  presses  it  down,  so  the 
mind  yields  to  demonstration. ' ' 

But  how  much  the  soul  is  more  empty  and 
without  counterpoise,  with  so  much  greater 
facility  it  yields  under  the  weight  of  the 
first  persuasion.  And  this  is  the  reason  that 
children,  the  common  people,  women,  and 
sick  folks,  are  most  apt  to  be  led  by  the  ears. 
But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  'tis  a  foolish 
presumption  to  slight  and  condemn  all  things 
for  false  that  do  not  appear  to  us  probable; 
which  is  the  ordinary  vice  of  such  as  fancy 
themselves  wiser  than  their  neighbors.  I 
was  myself  once  one  of  those;  and  if  I  heard 


MONTAIGNE  143 

talk  of  dead  folks  walking,  of  prophecies,  en- 
chantments, witchcrafts,  or  any  other  story 
I  had  no  mind  to  believe: — 

"Dreams,  magic  terrors,  marvels,  sorceries, 
Nightmares,  and  Thessalian  prodigies.' ■ 

I  presently  pitied  the  poor  people  that  were 
abused  by  these  follies.  Whereas  I  now  find, 
that  I  myself  was  to  be  pitied  as  mnch,  at 
least,  as  they;  not  that  experience  has  taught 
me  anything  to  alter  my  former  opinions, 
though  my  curiosity  has  endeavored  that 
way;  but  reason  has  instructed  me,  that  thus 
resolutely  to  condemn  anything  for  false  and 
impossible,  is  arrogantly  and  impiously  to 
circumscribe  and  limit  the  will  of  God,  and 
the  power  of  our  mother  nature,  within  the 
bounds  of  my  own  capacity,  than  which  no 
folly  can  be  greater.  If  we  give  the  names 
of  monster  and  miracle  to  everything  our 
reason  cannot  comprehend,  how  many  are 
continually  presented  before  our  eyes?  Let 
us  but  consider  through  what  clouds,  and  as 
it  were  groping  in  the  dark,  our  teachers  lead 
us  to  the  knowledge  of  most  of  the  things 
about  us;  assuredly  we  shall  find  that  it  is 


144  MONTAIGNE 

rather  custom  than  knowledge  that  takes 
away  their  strangeness: — 

"Weary  to  satiety  of  the  sight,  now  no  one 
deigns  to  look  np  to  heaven's  lucid  temples." 

and  that  if  those  things  were  now  newly 
presented  to  us,  we  should  think  them  as  in- 
credible, if  not  more,  than  any  others. 

"Si  nunc  primum  mortalibus  adsint 
Ex  improviso,  si  sint  objecta  repente, 
Nil  magis  his  rebus  poterat  mirabile  dici, 
Aute  minus  ante  quod  auderent  fore  credere 
gentes." 

He  that  had  never  seen  a  river,  imagined 
the  first  he  met  with  to  be  the  sea;  and  the 
greatest  things  that  have  fallen  within  our 
knowledge,  we  conclude  the  extremes  that 
nature  makes  of  the  kind: — 

"A  little  river  seems  to  him,  who  has  never 
seen  a  larger  river,  a  mighty  stream;  and  so 
with  other  things — a  tree,  a  man — anything 
appears  greatest  to  him  that  never  knew  a 
greater." 

"Things  grow  familiar  to  men's  minds  by 
being  often  seen;  nor  are  they  inquisitive 
about  things  they  daily  see." 


MONTAIGNE  145 

The  novelty,  rather  than  the  greatness  of 
things,  tempts  us  to  inquire  into  their  causes. 
We  are  to  judge  with  more  reverence,  and 
with  greater  acknowledgment  of  our  own 
ignorance  and  infirmity,  of  the  infinite  power 
of  nature.  How  many  unlikely  things  are 
there  testified  by  people  worthy  of  faith, 
which,  if  we  cannot  persuade  ourselves  abso- 
lutely to  believe,  we  ought  at  least  to  leave 
them  in  suspense;  for,  to  condemn  them  as 
impossible,  is  by  a  temerarious  presumption 
to  pretend  to  know  the  utmost  bounds  of  pos- 
sibility. Did  we  rightly  understand  the  dif- 
ference betwixt  the  impossible  and  the  un- 
usual, and  betwixt  that  which  is  contrary  to 
the  order  and  course  of  nature  and  contrary 
to  the  common  opinion  of  men,  in  not  believ- 
ing rashly,  and  on  the  other  hand,  in  not  be- 
ing too  incredulous,  we  should  observe  the 
rule  of  Ne  quid  nimis  enjoined  by  Chilo. 

When  we  find  in  Froissart,  that  the  Comte 
de  Foix  knew  in  Beam  the  defeat  of  John, 
king  of  Castile,  at  Jubera  the  next  day  after 
it  happened,  and  the  means  by  which  he  tells 
us  he  came  to  do  so,  we  may  be  allowed  to  be 
a  little  merry  at  it,  as  also  at  what  our  annals 


146  MONTAIGNE 

report,  that  Pope  Honorius,  the  same  day 
that  King  Philip  Augustus  died  at  Mantes, 
performed  his  public  obsequies  at  Rome,  and 
commanded  the  like  throughout  Italy,  the 
testimony  of  these  authors  not  being,  per- 
haps, of  authority  enough  to  restrain  us.  But 
what  if  Plutarch,  besides  several  examples 
that  he  produces  out  of  antiquity,  tells  us,  he 
knows  of  certain  knowledge,  that  in  the  time 
of  Domitian,  the  news  of  the  battle  lost  by 
Antony  in  Germany  was  published  at  Rome, 
many  days'  journey  from  thence,  and  dis- 
persed throughout  the  whole  world,  the  same 
day  it  was  fought;  and  if  Caesar  was  of 
opinion,  that  it  has  often  happened,  that  the 
report  has  preceded  the  incident,  shall  we 
not  say,  that  these  simple  people  have  suf- 
fered themselves  to  be  deceived  with  the 
vulgar,  for  not  having  been  so  clear-sighted 
as  we?  Is  there  anything  more  delicate, 
more  clear,  more  sprightly,  than  Pliny's 
judgment,  when  he  is  pleased  to  set  it  to 
work?  Anything  more  remote  from  vanity? 
Setting  aside  his  learning,  of  which  I  make 
less  account,  in  which  of  these  excellences  do 
any  of  us  excel  him  ?    And  yet  there  is  scarce 


MONTAIGNE  147 

a  young  schoolboy  that  does  not  convict  him 
of  untrnth,  and  that  pretends  not  to  instruct 
him  in  the  progress  of  the  works  of  nature. 

When  we  read  in  Bouchet  the  miracles  of 
St.  Hilary's  relics,  away  with  them:  his  au- 
thority is  not  sufficient  to  deprive  us  of  the 
liberty  of  contradicting  him;  but  generally 
and  offhand  to  condemn  all  suchlike  stories, 
seems  to  me  a  singular  impudence.  That 
great  St.  Augustin  testifies  to  have  seen  a 
blind  child  recover  sight  upon  the  relics  of 
St.  Gervasius  and  St.  Protasius  at  Milan;  a 
woman  at  Carthage  cured  of  a  cancer,  by  the 
sign  of  the  cross  made  upon  her  by  a  woman 
newly  baptized;  Hesperius,  a  familiar  friend 
of  his,  to  have  driven  away  the  spirits  that 
haunted  his  house,  with  a  little  earth  of  the 
sepulchre  of  our  Lord;  which  earth,  being 
also  transported  thence  into  the  church,  a 
paralytic  to  have  there  been  suddenly  cured 
by  it;  a  woman  in  a  procession,  having 
touched  St.  Stephen's  shrine  with  a  nosegay, 
and  rubbing  her  eyes  with  it,  to  have  re- 
covered her  sight,  lost  many  years  before; 
with  several  other  miracles  of  which  he  pro- 
fesses himself  to  have  been  an  eyewitness:  of 


148  MONTAIGNE 

what  shall  we  excuse  him  and  the  two  holy 
bishops,  Aurelius  and  Maximums,  both  of 
whom  he  attests  to  the  truth  of  these  things? 
Shall  it  be  of  ignorance,  simplicity,  and 
facility;  or  of  malice  and  imposture?  Is  any 
man  now  living  so  impudent  as  to  think  him- 
self comparable  to  them  in  virtue,  piety, 
learning,  judgment,  or  any  kind  of  perfec- 
tion?— 

"Who,  though  they  should  adduce  no  rea- 
son, would  convince  me  with  their  authority 
alone.' ' 

,rTis  a  presumption  of  great  danger  and  con- 
sequence, besides  the  absurd  temerity  it 
draws  after  it,  to  contemn  what  we  do  not 
comprehend.  For  after,  according  to  your 
fine  understanding,  you  have  established  the 
limits  of  truth  and  error,  and  that,  after- 
wards, there  appears  a  necessity  upon  you 
of  believing  stranger  things  than  those  you 
have  contradicted,  you  are  already  obliged  to 
quit  your  limits.  Now,  that  which  seems  to 
me  so  much  to  disorder  our  consciences  in 
the  commotions  we  are  now  in  concerning  re- 
ligion, is  the  Catholics  dispensing  so  much 


MONTAIGNE  149 

with  their  belief.  They  fancy  they  appear 
moderate,  and  wise,  when  they  grant  to  their 
opponents  some  of  the  articles  in  question; 
but,  besides  that  they  do  not  discern  what 
advantage  it  is  to  those  with  whom  we  con- 
tend, to  begin  to  give  ground  and  to  retire, 
and  how  much  this  animates  our  enemy  to 
follow  his  blow:  these  articles  which  they 
select  as  things  indifferent,  are  sometimes  of 
very  great  importance.  We  are  either  wholly 
and  absolutely  to  submit  ourselves  to  the  au- 
thority of  our  ecclesiastical  polity,  or  totally 
throw  off  all  obedience  to  it:  'tis  not  for  us 
to  determine  what  and  how  much  obedience 
we  owe  to  it.  And  this  I  can  say,  as  having 
myself  made  trial  of  it,  that  having  formerly 
taken  the  liberty  of  my  own  swing  and  fancy, 
and  omitted  or  neglected  certain  rules  of  the 
discipline  of  our  Church,  which  seemed  to 
me  vain  and  strange:  coming  afterwards  to 
discourse  of  it  with  learned  men,  I  have  found 
those  same  things  to  be  built  upon  very  good 
and  solid  ground  and  strong  foundation;  and 
that  nothing  but  stupidity  and  ignorance 
makes  us  receive  them  with  less  reverence 
than  the  rest.    Why  do  we  not  consider  what 


150  MONTAIGNE 

contradictions  we  find  in  our  own  judgments; 
how  many  things  were  yesterday  articles  of 
our  faith,  that  to-day  appear  no  other  than 
fables!  Glory  and  curiosity  are  the  scourges 
of  the  soul;  the  last  prompts  us  to  thrust  our 
noses  into  everything,  the  other  forbids  us 
to  leave  anything  doubtful  and  undecided. 


OF  FRIENDSHIP 

HAVING  CONSIDERED  the  proceedings  of 
a  painter  that  serves  me,  I  had  a  mind  to  imi- 
tate his  way.  He  chooses  the  fairest  place  and 
middle  of  any  wall,  or  panel,  wherein  to 
draw  a  picture,  which  he  finishes  with  his 
utmost  care  and  art,  and  the  vacuity  about  it 
he  fills  with  grotesques,  which  are  odd  fan- 
tastic figures  without  any  grace  but  what 
they  derive  from  their  variety,  and  the  ex- 
travagance of  their  shapes.  And  in  truth, 
what  are  these  things  I  scribble,  other  than 
grotesques  and  monstrous  bodies,  made  of 
various  parts,  without  any  certain  figure,  or 
any  other  than  accidental  order,  coherence, 
or  proportion? 


MONTAIGNE  151 

"A  fair  woman  in  her  upper  form  termi- 
nates in  a  fish." 

In  this  second  part  I  go  hand  in  hand  with 
my  painter;  but  fall  very  short  of  him  in  the 
first  and  the  better,  my  power  of  handling  not 
being  such,  that  I  dare  to  offer  at  a  rich 
piece,  finely  polished,  and  set  off  according  to 
art.  I  have  therefore  thought  fit  to  borrow 
one  of  Estienne  de  la  Boetie,  and  such  a  one 
as  shall  honor  and  adorn  all  the  rest  of  my 
work — namely,  a  discourse  that  he  called 
Voluntary  Servitude;  but,  since,  those  who 
did  not  know  him  have  properly  enough 
called  it  "Le  contr'  Un."  He  wrote  in  his 
youth  by  way  of  essay,  in  honor  of  liberty 
against  tyrants;  and  it  has  since  run  through 
the  hands  of  men  of  great  learning  and  judg- 
ment, not  without  singular  and  merited  com- 
mendation ;  for  it  is  finely  written,  and  as  full 
as  anything  can  possibly  be.  And  yet  one 
may  confidently  say  it  is  far  short  of  what 
he  was  able  to  do ;  and  if  in  that  more  mature 
age,  wherein  I  had  the  happiness  to  know 
him,  he  had  taken  a  design  like  this  of  mine, 
to  commit  his  thoughts  to  writing,  we  should 
have  seen  a  great  many  rare  things,  and  such 


152  MONTAIGNE 

as  would  have  gone  very  near  to  have  rivalled 
the  best  writings  of  antiquity:  for  in  natural 
parts  especially,  I  know  no  man  comparable 
to  him.  But  he  has  left  nothing  behind  him, 
save  this  treatise  only  (and  that  too  by 
chance,  for  I  believe  he  never  saw  it  after  it 
first  went  out  of  his  hands),  and  some  obser- 
vations upon  that  edict  of  January,  made 
famous  by  our  civil  wars,  which  also  shall 
elsewhere,  peradventure,  find  a  place.  These 
were  all  I  could  recover  of  his  remains,  I  to 
whom  with  so  affectionate  a  remembrance, 
upon  his  death-bed,  he  by  his  last  will  be- 
queathed  his  library  and  papers,  the  little 
book  of  his  works  only  excepted,  which  I  com- 
mitted to  the  press.  And  this  particular  obli- 
gation I  have  to  this  treatise  of  his,  that  it 
was  the  occasion  of  my  first  coming  ac- 
quainted with  him;  for  it  was  showed  to  me 
long  before  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  know 
him;  and  gave  me  the  first  knowledge  of  his 
name,  proving  the  first  cause  and  foundation 
of  a  friendship,  which  we  afterwards  im- 
proved and  maintained,  so  long  as  God  was 
pleased  to  continue  us  together,  so  perfect, 
inviolate,  and  entire,  that  certainly  the  like 


MONTAIGNE  153 

is  hardly  to  be  found  in  story,  and  amongst 
the  men  of  this  age,  there  is  no  sign  nor  trace 
of  any  such  thing  in  use;  so  much  concurrence 
is  required  to  the  building  of  such  a  one,  that 
'tis  much,  if  fortune  bring  it  but  once  to  pass 
in  three  ages. 

There  is  nothing  to  which  nature  seems  so 
much  to  have  inclined  us,  as  to  society;  and 
Aristotle  says,  that  the  good  legislators  had 
more  respect  to  friendship  than  to  justice. 
Now  the  most  supreme  point  of  its  perfection 
is  this:  for,  generally,  all  those  that  pleasure, 
profit,  public  or  private  interest  create  and 
nourish,  are  so  much  the  less  beautiful  and 
generous,  and  so  much  the  less  friendships, 
by  how  much  they  mix  another  cause,  and 
design,  and  fruit  in  friendship,  than  itself. 
Neither  do  the  four  ancient  kinds,  natural, 
social,  hospitable,  venereal,  either  separately 
or  jointly,  make  up  a  true  and  perfect  friend- 
ship. 

That  of  children  to  parents  is  rather  re- 
spect: friendship  is  nourished  by  communica- 
tion, which  cannot  by  reason  of  the  great 
disparity,  be  betwixt  these,  but  would  rather 
perhaps  offend  the  duties    of   nature;    for 


154  MONTAIGNE 

neither  are  all  the  secret  thoughts  of  fathers 
fit  to  be  communicated  to  children,  lest  it 
beget  an  indecent  familiarity  betwixt  them; 
nor  can  the  advices  and  reproofs,  which  is 
one  of  the  principal  offices  of  friendship,  be 
properly  performed  by  the  son  to  the  father. 
There  are  some  countries  where  'twas  the 
custom  for  children  to  kill  their  fathers;  and 
others,  where  the  fathers  killed  their  chil- 
dren, to  avoid  their  being  an  impediment  one 
to  another  in  life ;  and  naturally  the  expecta- 
tions of  the  one  depend  upon  the  ruin  of  the 
other.  There  have  been  great  philosophers 
who  have  made  nothing  of  this  tie  of  nature, 
as  Aristippus  for  one,  who  being  pressed 
home  about  the  affection  he  owed  to  his  chil- 
dren, as  being  come  out  of  him,  presently  fell 
to  spit,  saying,  that  this  also  came  out  of 
him,  and  that  we  also  breed  worms  and  lice; 
and  that  other,  that  Plutarch  endeavored  to 
reconcile  to  his  brother:  "I  make  never  the 
more  account  of  him,"  said  he,  "for  coming 
out  of  the  same  hole. ' '  This  name  of  brother 
does  indeed  carry  with  it  a  fine  and  delectable 
sound,  and  for  that  reason,  he  and  I  called  one 
another  brothers:  but  the  complication  of  in- 


MONTAIGNE  155 

terests,  the  division  of  estates,  and  that  the 
wealth  of  the  one  should  be  the  property  of 
the  other,  strangely  relax  and  weaken  the 
fraternal  tie:  brothers  pursuing  their  fortune 
and  advancement  by  the  same  path,  'tis  hardly 
possible  but  they  must  of  necessity  often 
jostle  and  hinder  one  another.  Besides,  why 
is  it  necessary  that  the  correspondence  of 
manners,  parts,  and  inclinations,  which  be- 
gets the  true  and  perfect  friendships,  should 
always  meet  in  these  relations!  The  father 
and  the  son  may  be  of  quite  contrary 
humors,  and  so  of  brothers:  he  is  my  son, 
he  is  my  brother;  but  he  is  passionate,  ill- 
natured,  or  a  fool.  And  moreover,  by  how 
much  these  are  friendships  that  the  law  and 
natural  obligation  impose  upon  us,  so  much 
less  is  there  of  our  own  choice  and  voluntary 
freedom;  whereas  that  voluntary  liberty  of 
ours  has  no  production  more  promptly  and 
properly  its  own  that  affection  and  friend- 
ship. Not  that  I  have  not  in  my  own  person 
experimented  all  that  can  possibly  be  expected 
of  that  kind,  having  had  the  best  and  most 
indulgent  father,  even  to  his  extreme  old  age, 
that  ever  was,  and  who    was   himself   de- 


156  MONTAIGNE 

scended  from  a  family  for  many  generations 
famous  and  exemplary  for  brotherly  con- 
cord:— 

"And  I  myself,  known  to  have  a  paternal 
love  toward  my  brothers.' ' 

We  are  not  here  to  bring  the  love  we  bear 
to  women,  though  it  be  an  act  of  our  own 
choice,  into  comparison,  nor  rank  it  with  the 
others.    The  fire  of  this,  I  confess: — 

"Nor  is  the  goddess  unknown  to  me  who 
mixes  a  sweet  bitterness  with  my  love," 

is  more  active,  more  eager,  and  more  sharp: 
but  withal,  'tis  more  precipitant,  fickle,  mov- 
ing, and  inconstant;  a  fever  subject  to  inter- 
missions and  paroxysms,  that  has  seized  but 
on  one  part  of  us.  Whereas  on  friendship, 
'tis  a  general  and  universal  fire,  but  tem- 
perate and  equal,  a  constant  established  heat, 
all  gentle  and  smooth,  without  poignancy  or 
roughness.  Moreover,  in  love,  'tis  no  other 
than  frantic  desire  for  that  which  flies  from 
us: — 

"As  the  hunter  pursues  the  hare,  in  cold 


MONTAIGNE  157 

and  heat,  to  the  mountain,  to  the  shore,  nor 
cares  for  it  farther  when  he  sees  it  taken,  and 
only  delights  in  chasing  that  which  flees  from 
him;,, 

so  soon  as  it  enters  into  the  terms  of  friend- 
ship, that  is  to  say,  into  a  concurrence  of 
desires,  it  vanishes  and  is  gone,  fruition  de- 
stroys it,  as  having  only  a  fleshly  end,  and 
such  a  one  as  is  subject  to  satiety.  Friend- 
ship, on  the  contrary,  is  enjoyed  proportion- 
ably  as  it  is  desired;  and  only  grows  up,  is 
nourished  and  improved  by  enjoyment,  as  be- 
ing of  itself  spiritual,  and  the  soul  growing 
Btill  more  refined  by  practice.  Under  this 
perfect  friendship,  the  other  fleeting  affec- 
tions have  in  my  younger  years  found  some 
place  in  me,  to  say  nothing  of  him,  who  him- 
self so  confesses  but  too  much  in  his  verses; 
so  that  I  had  both  these  passions,  but  always 
so,  that  I  could  myself  well  enough  distin- 
guish them,  and  never  in  any  degree  of  com- 
parison with  one  another;  the  first  maintain- 
ing its  flight  in  so  lofty  and  so  brave  a  place, 
as  with  disdain  to  look  down,  and  see  the 
other  flying  at  a  far  humbler  pitch  below. 
As  concerning  marriage,  besides  that  it  is 


158  MONTAIGNE 

a  covenant,  the  entrance  into  which  only  is 
free,  bnt  the  continuance  in  it  forced  and 
compulsory,  having  another  dependence  than 
that  of  our  own  free  will,  and  a  bargain  com- 
monly contracted  to  other  ends,  there  almost 
always  happens  a  thousand  intricacies  in  it  to 
unravel,  enough  to  break  the  thread  and  to 
divert  the  current  of  a  lively  affection: 
whereas  friendship  has  no  manner  of  busi- 
ness or  traffic  with  aught  but  itself.  More- 
over, to  say  truth,  the  ordinary  talent  of 
women  is  not  such  as  is  sufficient  to  maintain 
the  conference  and  communication  required 
to  the  support  of  this  sacred  tie;  nor  do  they 
appear  to  be  endued  with  constancy  of  mind, 
to  sustain  the  pinch  of  so  hard  and  durable 
a  knot.  And  doubtless,  if  without  this,  there 
could  be  such  a  free  and  voluntary  familiar- 
ity contracted,  where  not  only  the  souls  might 
have  this  entire  fruition,  but  the  bodies  also 
might  sljare  in  the  alliance,  and  a  man  be  en- 
gaged throughout,  the  friendship  would  cer- 
tainly be  more  full  and  perfect;  but  it  is  with- 
out example  that  this  sex  has  ever  yet  ar- 
rived at  such  perfection;  and,  by  the  com- 
mon consent  of  the  ancient  schools,  it  is 
wholly  rejected  from  it. 


MONTAIGNE  159 

That  other  Grecian  licence  is  justly  ab- 
horred by  our  manners,  which  also,  from  hav- 
ing, according  to  their  practice,  a  so  neces- 
sary disparity  of  age  and  difference  of  offices 
betwixt  the  lovers,  answered  no  more  to  the 
perfect  union  and  harmony  that  we  here  re- 
quire than  the  other: — 

"For  what  is  that  friendly  love?  why  does 
no  one  love  a  deformed  youth  or  a  comely 
old  man! " 

Neither  will  that  very  picture  that  the 
Academy  presents  of  it,  as  I  conceive,  contra- 
dict me,  when  I  say,  that  this  first  fury  in- 
spired by  the  son  of  Venus  into  the  heart  of 
the  lover,  upon  sight  of  the  flower  and  prime 
of  a  springing  and  blossoming  youth,  to 
which  they  allow  all  the  insolent  and  pas- 
sionate efforts  that  an  immoderate  ardor  can 
produce,  was  simply  founded  upon  external 
beauty,  the  false  image  of  corporal  genera- 
tion; for  it  could  not  ground  this  love  upon 
the  soul,  the  sight  of  which  as  yet  lay  con- 
cealed,, was  but  now  springing,  and  not  of 
maturity  to  blossom;  that  this  fury,  if  it 
seized  upon  a  low  spirit,  the  means  by  which 


160  MONTAIGNE 

it  preferred  its  suit  were  rich  presents, 
favor  in  advancement  to  dignities,  and  such 
trumpery,  which  they  by  no  means  approve; 
if  on  a  more  generous  soul,  the  pursuit  was 
suitably  generous,  by  philosophical  instruc- 
tions, precepts  to  revere  religion,  to  obey  the 
laws,  to  die  for  the  good  of  one's  country;  by 
examples  of  valor,  prudence,  and  justice,  the 
lover  studying  to  render  himself  acceptable 
by  the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  soul,  that  of 
his  body  being  long  since  faded  and  decayed, 
hoping  by  this  mental  society  to  establish  a 
more  firm  and  lasting  contract.  When  this 
courtship  came  to  effect  in  due  season  (for 
that  which  they  do  not  require  in  the  lover, 
namely,  leisure  and  discretion  in  his  pursuit, 
they  strictly  require  in  the  person  loved,  for- 
asmuch as  he  is  to  judge  of  an  internal 
beauty,  of  difficult  knowledge  and  abstruse 
discovery),  then  there  sprung  in  the  person 
loved  the  desire  of  a  spiritual  conception,  by 
the  mediation  of  a  spiritual  beauty.  This 
was  the  principal;  the  corporeal,  an  acci- 
dental and  secondary  matter;  quite  the  con- 
trary as  to  the  lover.  For  this  reason  they 
prefer  the  person  beloved,  maintaining  that 


MONTAIGNE  161 

the  gods  in  like  manner  preferred  him  too, 
and  very  much  blame  the  poet  Aeschylus  for 
having,  in  the  loves  of  Achilles  and  Patroclus, 
given  the  lover's  part  to  Achilles,  who  was  in 
the  first  and  beardless  flower  of  his  adoles- 
cence, and  the  handsomest  of  all  the  Greeks. 
After  this  general  community,  the  sovereign 
and  most  worthy  part  presiding  and  govern- 
ing, and  performing  its  proper  offices,  they 
say,  that  thence  great  utility  was  derived, 
both  by  private  and  public  concerns;  that  it 
constituted  the  force  and  power  of  the  coun- 
tries where  it  prevailed,  and  the  chiefest 
security  of  liberty  and  justice.  Of  which  the 
healthy  loves  of  Harmodius  and  Aristogiton 
are  instances.  And  therefore  it  is  that  they 
called  it  sacred  and  divine,  and  conceive  that 
nothing  but  the  violence  of  tyrants  and  the 
baseness  of  the  common  people  are  inimical 
to  it.  Finally,  all  that  can  be  said  in  favor 
of  the  Academy  is,  that  it  was  a  love  which 
ended  in  friendship,  which  well  enough 
agrees  with  the  Stoical  definition  of  love: — 

"That  love  was  an  effort  to  form  friend- 
ship from  the  beauty  of  the  object." 


162  MONTAIGNE 

I  return  to  my  own  more  just  and  true  de- 
scription:— 

"Altogether  friendships  are  to  be  judged 
from  the  minds  and  years  of  those,  when  they 
become  fortified  and  confirmed." 

For  the  rest,  what  we  commonly  call  friends 
and  friendships,  are  nothing  but  acquaint- 
ance and  familiarities,  either  occasionally 
contracted,  or  upon  some  design,  by  means 
of  which  there  happens  some  little  intercourse 
betwixt  our  souls.  But  in  the  friendship  I 
speak  of,  they  mix  and  work  themselves  into 
one  piece,  with  so  universal  a  mixture,  that 
there  is  no  more  sign  of  the  seam  by  which 
they  were  first  conjoined.  If  a  man  should 
importune  me  to  give  a  reason  why  I  loved 
him,  I  find  it  could  no  otherwise  be  expressed, 
than  by  making  answer:  because  it  was  he, 
because  it  was  I.  There  is,  beyond  all  that 
I  am  able  to  say,  I  know  not  what  inexplica- 
ble and  fated  power  that  brought  on  this 
union.  We  sought  one  another  long  before 
we  met,  and  by*  the  characters  we  heard  of 
one  another,  which  wrought  upon  our  affec- 
tions more  than,    in  reason,    mere    reports 


MONTAIGNE  163 

should  do;  I  think  'twas  by  some  secret  ap- 
pointment of  heaven.  We  embraced  in  our 
names;  and  at  our  first  meeting,  which  was 
accidentally  at  a  great  city  entertainment,  we 
found  ourselves  so  mutually  taken  with  one 
another,  so  acquainted,  and  so  endeared  be- 
twixt ourselves,  that  from  thenceforward 
nothing  was  so  near  to  us  as  one  another.  He 
wrote  an  excellent  Latin  satire,  since  printed, 
wherein  he  excuses  the  precipitation  of  our 
intelligence,  so  suddenly  come  to  perfection, 
saying,  that  destined  to  have  so  short  a  con- 
tinuance, as  begun  so  late  (for  we  were  both 
full-grown  men,  and  he  some  years  the  older), 
there  was  no  time  to  lose,  nor  were  we  tied 
to  conform  to  the  example  of  those  slow  and 
regular  friendships,  that  require  so  many 
precautions  of  long  preliminary  conversation. 
This  has  no  other  idea  than  that  of  itself,  and 
can  only  refer  to  itself:  this  is  no  one  special 
consideration,  nor  two,  nor  three,  nor  four, 
nor  a  thousand;  'tis  I  know  not  what  quint- 
essence of  all  this  mixture,  which,  seizing  my 
whole  will,  carried  it  to  plunge  and  lose  itself 
in  his,  and  that  having  seized  his  whole  will, 
brought  it  back  with  equal  concurrence  and 


164  MONTAIGNE 

appetite  to  plunge  and  lose  itself  in  mine.  I 
may  truly  say  lose,  reserving  nothing  to  our- 
selves that  was  either  his  or  mine. 

When  Laelius,  in  the  presence  of  the 
Roman  consuls,  who  after  they  had  sentenced 
Tiberius  Gracchus,  prosecuted  all  those  who 
had  had  any  familiarity  with  him  also,  came 
to  ask  Caius  Blosius,  who  was  his  chiefest 
friend,  how  much  he  would  have  done  for 
him,  and  that  he  made  answer:  "All  things.' ' 
"How!  All  things!"  said  Laelius.  "And 
what  if  he  had  commanded  you  to  fire  our 
temples ?"  "He  would  never  have  com- 
manded me  that,"  replied  Blosius.  "But 
what  if  he  had?"  said  Laelius.  "I  would 
have  obeyed  him, ' '  said  the  other.  If  he  was 
so  perfect  a  friend  to  Gracchus  as  the  his- 
tories report  him  to  have  been,  there  was  yet 
no  necessity  of  offending  the  consuls  by  such 
a  bold  confession,  though  he  might  still  have 
retained  the  assurance  he  had  of  Gracchus' 
disposition.  However,  those  who  accuse  this 
answer  as  seditious,  do  not  well  understand 
the  mystery;  nor  presuppose,  as  it  was  true, 
that  he  had  Gracchus'  will  in  his  sleeve,  both 
by  the  power  of  a  friend,  and  the  perfect 


MONTAIGNE  165 

knowledge  he  had  of  the  man:  they  were 
more  friends  than  citizens,  more  friends  to 
one  another  than  either  enemies  or  friends  to 
their  country,  or  than  friends  to  ambition 
and  innovation;  having  absolutely  given  up 
themselves  to  one  another,  either  held  abso- 
lutely the  reins  of  the  other's  inclination;  and 
suppose  all  this  guided  by  virtue,  and  all  this 
by  the  conduct  of  reason,  which  also  without 
these  it  had  not  been  possible  to  do,  Blosius* 
answer  was  such  as  it  ought  to  be.  If  any 
of  their  actions  flew  out  of  the  handle,  they 
were  neither  (according  to  my  measure  of 
friendship)  friends  to  one  another,  nor  to 
themselves.  As  to  the  rest,  this  answer 
carries  no  worse  sound,  than  mine  would  do 
to  one  that  should  ask  me:  "If  your  will 
should  command  you  to  kill  your  daughter, 
would  you  do  it?"  and  that  I  should  make 
answer,  that  I  would;  for  this  expresses  no 
consent  to  such  an  act,  forasmuch  as  I  do  not 
in  the  least  suspect  my  own  will,  and  as  little 
that  of  such  a  friend.  'Tis  not  in  the  power 
of  all  the  eloquence  in  the  world,  to  dispossess 
me  of  the  certainty  I  have  of  the  intentions 
and  resolutions  of  my  friend;  nay,  no  one 


166  MONTAIGNE 

action  of  his,  what  face  soever  it  might  bear, 
could  be  presented  to  me,  of  which  I  could  not 
presently,  and  at  first  sight,  find  out  the 
moving  cause.  Our  souls  had  drawn  so 
unanimously  together,  they  had  considered 
each  other  with  so  ardent  an  affection,  and 
with  the  like  affection  laid  open  the  very 
bottom  of  our  hearts  to  one  another's  view, 
that  I  not  only  knew  his  as  well  as  my  own; 
but  should  certainly  in  any  concern  of  mine 
have  trusted  my  interest  much  more  wil- 
lingly with  him,  than  with  myself. 

Let  no  one,  therefore,  rank  other  common 
friendships  with  such  a  one  as  this.  I  have 
had  as  much  experience  of  these  as  another, 
and  of  the  most  perfect  of  their  kind:  but  I 
do  not  advise  that  any  should  confound  the 
rules  of  the  one  and  the  other,  for  they  would 
find  themselves  much  deceived.  In  those 
other  ordinary  friendships,  you  are  to  walk 
with  bridle  in  your  hand,  with  prudence  and 
circumspection,  for  in  them  the  knot  is  not 
so  sure  that  a  man  may  not  half  suspect  it 
will  slip.  "Love  him,"  said  Chilo,  "so  as  if 
you  were  one  day  to  hate  him;  and  hate  him 
so  as  you  were  one  day  to  love  him."    This 


MONTAIGNE  167 

precept,  though  abominable  in  the  sovereign 
and  perfect  friendship  I  speak  of,  is  never- 
theless very  sound  as  to  the  practice  of  the 
ordinary  and  customary  ones,  and  to  which 
the  saying  that  Aristotle  had  so  frequent  in 
his  mouth,  "0  my  friends,  there  is  no 
friend;"  may  very  fitly  be  applied.  In  this 
noble  commerce,  good  offices,  presents,  and 
benefits,  by  which  other  friendships  are  sup- 
ported and  maintained,  do  not  deserve  so 
much  as  to  be  mentioned;  and  the  reason  is 
the  concurrence  of  our  wills;  for,  as  the  kind- 
ness I  have  for  myself  receives  no  increase, 
for  anything  I  relieve  myself  withal  in  time 
of  need  (whatever  the  Stoics  say),  and  as  I 
do  not  find  myself  obliged  to  myself  for  any 
service  I  do  myself:  so  the  union  of  such 
friends,  being  truly  perfect,  deprives  them  of 
all  idea  of  such  duties,  and  makes  them  loathe 
and  banish  from  their  conversation  these 
words  of  division  and  distinction,  benefits, 
obligation,  acknowledgment,  entreaty,  thanks, 
and  the  like.  All  things,  wills,  thoughts, 
opinions,  goods,  wives,  children,  honors,  and 
lives,  being  in  effect  common  betwixt  them, 
and  that  absolute  concurrence  of  affections 


168  MONTAIGNE 

being  no  other  than  one  soul  in  two  bodies 
(according  to  that  very  proper  definition  of 
Aristotle),  they  can  neither  lend  nor  give 
anything  to  one  another.  This  is  the  reason 
why  the  lawgivers,  to  honor  marriage  with 
some  resemblance  of  this  divine  alliance,  in- 
terdict all  gifts  betwixt  man  and  wife;  in- 
ferring by  that,  that  all  should  belong  to  each 
of  them,  and  that  they  have  nothing  to  divide 
or  to  give  to  each  other. 

If,  in  the  friendship  of  which  I  speak,  one 
could  give  to  the  other,  the  receiver  of  the 
benefit  would  be  the  man  that  obliged  his 
friend;  for  each  of  them  contending  and 
above  all  things  studying  how  to  be  useful 
to  the  other,  he  that  administers  the  occasion 
is  the  liberal  man,  in  giving  his  friend  the 
satisfaction  of  doing  that  towards  him  which 
above  all  things  he  most  desires.  When  the 
philosopher  Diogenes  wanted  money,  he  used 
to  say,  that  he  redemanded  it  of  his  friends, 
not  that  he  demanded  it.  And  to  let  you  see 
the  practical  working  of  this,  I  will  here  pro- 
duce an  ancient  and  singular  example. 
Eudamidas,  a  Corinthan,  had  two  friends, 
Charixenus  a  Sicyonian  and  Areteus  a  Corin- 


MONTAIGNE  169 

thian ;  this  man  coming  to  die,  being  poor,  and 
his  two  friends  rich,  he  made  his  will  after 
this  manner.  "I  bequeath  to  Areteus  the 
maintenance  of  my  mother,  to  support  and 
provide  for  her  in  her  old  age;  and  to  Chari- 
xenus  I  bequeath  the  care  of  marrying  my 
daughter,  and  to  give  her  as  good  a  portion 
as  he  is  able;  and  in  case  one  of  these  chance 
to  die,  I  hereby  substitute  the  survivor  in  his 
place.' '  They  who  first  saw  this  will  made 
themselves  very  merry  at  the  contents:  but 
the  legatees,  being  made  acquainted  with  it, 
accepted  it  with  very  great  content;  and  one 
of  them,  Charixenus,  dying  within  five  days 
after,  and  by  that  means  the  charge  of  both 
duties  devolving  solely  on  him,  Areteus 
nurtured  the  old  woman  with  very  great  care 
and  tenderness,  and  of  five  talents  he  had  in 
estate,  he  gave  two  and  a  half  in  marriage 
with  an  only  daughter  he  had  of  his  own,  and 
two  and  a  half  in  marriage  with  the  daugh- 
ter of  Eudamidas,  and  on  one  and  the  same 
day  solemnized  both  their  nuptials. 

This  example  is  very  full,  if  one  thing  were 
not  to  be  objected,  namely  the  multitude  of 
friends:  for  the  perfect  friendship  I  speak  of 


170  MONTAIGNE 

is  indivisible;  each  one  gives  himself  so  en- 
tirely to  his  friend,  that  he  has  nothing  left 
to  distribute  to  others:  on  the  contrary,  is 
sorry  that  he  is  not  double,  treble,  or  quad- 
ruple, and  that  he  has  not  many  souls  and 
many  wills,  to  confer  them  all  upon  this  one 
object.  Common  friendships  will  admit  of 
division;  one  may  love  the  beauty  of  this 
person,  the  good-humor  of  that,  the  liber- 
ality of  a  third,  the  paternal  affection  of  a 
fourth,  the  fraternal  love  of  a  fifth,  and  so  of 
the  rest:  but  this  friendship  that  possesses 
the  whole  soul,  and  there  rules  and  sways 
with  an  absolute  sovereignty,  cannot  possibly 
admit  of  a  rival.  If  two  at  the  same  time 
should  call  to  you  for  succor,  to  which  of 
them  would  you  run?  Should  they  require 
of  you  contrary  offices,  how  could  you  serve 
them  both?  Should  one  commit  a  thing  to 
your  silence  that  it  were  of  importance  to  the 
other  to  know,  how  would  you  disengage 
yourself?  A  unique  and  particular  friend- 
ship dissolves  all  other  obligations  whatso- 
ever: the  secret  I  have  sworn  not  to  reveal  to 
any  other,  I  may  without  perjury  communi- 
cate to  him  who  is  not  another,  but  myself. 


MONTAIGNE  171 

,rTis  miracle  enough  certainly,  for  a  man  to 
double  himself,  and  those  that  talk  of  trip- 
ling, talk  they  know  not  of  what.  Nothing 
is  extreme,  that  has  its  like;  and  he  who  shall 
suppose,  that  of  two,  I  love  one  as  much  as 
the  other,  that  they  mutually  love  one 
another  too,  and  love  me  as  much,  as  I  love 
them,  multiplies  into  a  confraternity  the 
most  single  of  units,  and  whereof,  moreover, 
one  alone  is  the  hardest  thing  in  the  world  to 
find.  The  rest  of  this  story  suits  very  well 
with  what  I  was  saying;  for  Eudamidas,  as 
a  bounty  and  favor,  bequeaths  to  his  friends 
a  legacy  of  employing  themselves  in  his 
necessity;  he  leaves  them  heirs  to  this  lib- 
erality of  his,  which  consists  in  giving  them 
the  opportunity  of  conferring  a  benefit  upon 
him;  and  doubtless,  the  force  of  friendship  is 
more  eminently  apparent  in  this  act  of  his, 
than  in  that  of  Areteus.  In  short,  these  are 
effects  not  to  be  imagined  nor  comprehended 
by  such  as  have  not  experience  of  them,  and 
which  make  me  infinitely  honor  and  admire 
the  answer  of  that  young  soldier  to  Cyrus,  by 
whom  being  asked  how  much  he  would  take 
for  a  horse,  with  which  he  had  won  the  prize 


172  MONTAIGNE 

of  a  race,  and  whether  he  would  exchange 
him  for  a  kingdom?  "No,  truly,  sir,"  said 
he,  "but  I  would  give  him  with  all  my  heart, 
to  get  thereby  a  true  friend,  could  I  find  out 
any  man  worthy  of  that  alliance.' '  He  did 
not  say  ill  in  saying,  "could  I  find:''  for 
though  one  may  almost  everywhere  meet  with 
men  sufficiently  qualified  for  a  superficial  ac- 
quaintance, yet  in  this,  where  a  man  is  to 
deal  from  the  very  bottom  of  his  heart,  with- 
out any  manner  of  reservation,  it  will  be 
requisite  that  all  the  wards  and  springs  be 
truly  wrought  and  perfectly  sure. 

In  confederations  that  hold  but  by  one 
end,  we  are  only  to  provide  against  the  im- 
perfections that  particularly  concern  that 
end.  It  can  be  of  no  importance  to  me 
of  what  religion  my  physician  or  my 
lawyer  is;  this  consideration  has  noth- 
ing in  common  with  the  offices  of  friendship 
which  they  owe  me;  and  I  am  of  the  same 
indifference  in  the  domestic  acquaintance  my 
servants  must  necessarily  contract  with  me. 
I  never  inquire,  when  I  am  to  take  a  foot- 
man, if  he  be  chaste,  but  if  he  be  diligent; 
and  am  not  solicitous  if  my  muleteer  be 


MONTAIGNE  173 

given  to  gaming,  as  if  he  be  strong  and  able ; 
or  if  my  cook  be  a  swearer,  if  he  be  a  good 
cook.  I  do  not  take  upon  me  to  direct  what 
other  men  should  do  in  the  government  of 
their  families,  there  are  plenty  that  meddle 
enough  with  that,  but  only  give  an  account  of 
my  method  in  my  own : — 

"This  has  been  my  way;  as  for  you,  do  as 
you  find  needful." 

For  table-talk,  I  prefer  the  pleasant  and 
witty  before  the  learned  and  the  grave;  in 
bed,  beauty  before  goodness;  in  common  dis- 
course the  ablest  speaker,  whether  or  no 
there  be  sincerity  in  the  case.  And,  as  he 
that  was  found  astride  upon  a  hobby-horse, 
playing  with  his  children,  entreated  the  per- 
son who  had  surprised  him  in  that  posture  to 
say  nothing  of  it  till  himself  came  to  be  a 
father,  supposing  that  the  fondness  that 
would  then  possess  his  own  soul,  would  ren- 
der him  a  fairer  judge  of  such  an  action ;  so  I, 
also,  could  wish  to  speak  to  such  as  have  had 
experience  of  what  I  say:  though,  knowing 
how  remote  a  thing  such  a  friendship  is  from 
the  common  practice,  and  how  rarely  it  is  to 


174  MONTAIGNE 

be  found,  I  despair  of  meeting  with  any  such 
judge.  For  even  these  discourses  left  us  by 
antiquity  upon  this  subject,  seem  to  me  flat 
and  poor,  in  comparison  of  the  sense  I  have  of 
it,  and  in  this  particular,  the  effects  surpass 
even  the  precepts  of  philosophy: — 

"While  I  have  sense  left  to  me,  there  will 
never  be  anything  more  acceptable  to  me 
than  an  agreeable  friend." 

The  ancient  Menander  declared  him  to  be 
happy  that  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet 
with  but  the  shadow  of  a  friend:  and  doubt- 
less he  had  good  reason  to  say  so,  especially 
if  he  spoke  by  experience :  for  in  good  earnest, 
if  I  compare  all  the  rest  of  my  life,  though, 
thanks  be  to  God,  I  have  passed  my  time 
pleasantly  enough,  and  at  my  ease,  and  the 
loss  of  such  a  friend  excepted,  free  from  any 
grievous  affliction,  and  in  great  tranquillity 
of  mind,  having  been  contented  with  my 
natural  and  original  commodities,  without 
being  solicitous  after  others;  if  I  should  com- 
pare it  all,  I  say,  with  the  four  years  I  had 
the  happiness  to  enjoy  the  sweet  society  of 
this  excellent  man,   'tis  nothing  but  smoke, 


MONTAIGNE  175 

an  obscure  and  tedious  night.  From  the 
day  that  I  lost  him: — 

"Which  I  shall  ever  hold  bitter,  ever 
honored  (so,  gods,  have  ye  willed)." 

I  have  only  led  a  languishing  life;  and  the 
very  pleasures  that  present  themselves  to 
me,  instead  of  administering  anything  of  con- 
solation, double  my  affliction  for  his  loss. 
We  were  halves  throughout,  and  to  that  de- 
gree, that  methinks,  by  outliving  him,  I  de- 
fraud him  of  his  part: — 

"I  have  prescribed  to  myself  that  it  is  not 
rightful  to  enjoy  any  pleasure,  so  long  as  he, 
my  partner  in  such  great  ones,  is  away." 

I  was  so  grown  and  accustomed  to  be  always 
his  double  in  all  places  and  in  all  things,  that 
methinks  I  am  no  more  than  half  of  myself: — 

"If  a  superior  force  has  taken  that  part  of 
my  soul,  why  do  I,  the  remaining  one,  linger 
behind?  What  is  left  is  not  so  dear,  nor  an 
entire  thing:  this  day  has  wrought  the  de- 
struction of  both." 

There  is  no  action  or  imagination  of  mine 


176  MONTAIGNE 

wherein  I  do  not  miss  him;  as  I  know  that  he 
would  have  missed  me:  for  as  he  surpassed 
me  by  infinite  degrees  in  virtue  and  all  other 
accomplishments,  so  he  also  did  in  the  duties 
of  friendship: — 

"What  shame  can  there,  or  measure,  in 
lamenting  so  dear  a  friend  ?" 

' '  0  brother,  taken  from  me  miserable !  with 
thee,  all  our  joys  have  vanished,  those  joys 
which,  in  thy  life,  thy  dear  love  nourished. 
Dying,  thou,  my  brother,  hast  destroyed  all 
my  happiness.  My  whole  soul  is  buried  with 
thee.  Through,  whose  death  I  have  banished 
from  my  mind  these  studies,  and  all  the  de- 
lights of  the  mind.  Shall  I  address  thee? 
I  shall  never  hear  thy  voice.  Never  shall  I 
behold  thee  hereafter.  O  brother,  dearer  to 
me  than  life.  Nought  remains,  but  assuredly 
I  shall  ever  love  thee." 

But  let  us  hear  a  boy  of  sixteen  speak  a 
little 

Because  I  have  found  that  that  work  has 
been  since  brought  out,  and  with  a  mis- 
chievous design,  by  those  who  aim  at  dis- 
turbing and  changing  the  condition  of  our 


MONTAIGNE  177 

government,  without  troubling  themselves  to 
think  whether  they  are  likely  to  improve  it: 
and  because  they  have  mixed  up  his  work 
with  some  of  their  own  performance,  I  have 
refrained  from  inserting  it  here.  But  that 
the  memory  of  the  author  may  not  be  in- 
jured, nor  suffer  with  such  as  could  not  come 
nearhand  to  be  acquainted  with  his  prin- 
ciples, I  here  give  them  to  understand,  that 
it  was  written  by  him  in  his  boyhood,  and 
that  by  way  of  exercise  only,  as  a  common 
theme  that  has  been  hackneyed  by  a  thousand 
writers.  I  make  no  question  but  that  he  him- 
self believed  what  he  wrote,  being  so  con- 
scientious that  he  would  not  so  much  as  lie 
in  jest:  and  I  moreover  know,  that  could 
it  have  been  in  his  own  choice,  he  had  rather 
have  been  born  at  Venice,  than  at  Sarlac;  and 
with  reason.  But  he  had  another  maxim 
sovereignly  imprinted  in  his  soul,  very  re- 
ligiously to  obey  and  submit  to  the  laws 
under  which  he  was  born.  There  never  was 
a  better  citizen,  more  affectionate  to  his 
country;  nor  a  greater  enemy  to  all  the  com- 
motions and  innovations  of  his  time:  so  that 
he  would  much  rather  have  employed  his 


178  MONTAIGNE 

talent  to  the  extinguishing  of  those  civil 
flames,  than  have  added  any  fuel  to  them;  he 
had  a  mind  fashioned  to  the  model  of  better 
ages.  Now,  in  exchange  of  this  serious 
piece,  I  will  present  you  with  another  of  a 
more  gay  and  frolic  air,  from  the  same  hand, 
and  written  at  the  same  age. 


OF  MODERATION. 

AS  IF  we  had  an  infectious  touch,  we,  by  our 
manner  of  handling,  corrupt  things  that  in 
themselves  are  laudable  and  good:  we  may 
grasp  virtue  so  that  it  becomes  vicious,  if  we 
embrace  it  too  stringently  and  with  too  vio- 
lent a  desire.  Those  who  say,  there  is  never 
any  excess  in  virtue,  forasmuch  as  it  is  not 
virtue  when  it  once  becomes  excess,  only  play 
upon  words: — 

"Let  the  wise  man  bear  the  name  of  a  mad- 
man, the  just  one  of  an  unjust,  if  he  seek 
wisdom  more  than  is  sufficient." 

This  is  a  subtle  consideration  of  philoso- 
phy. A  man  may  both  be  too  much  in  love 
with  virtue,  and  be  excessive  in  a  just  action. 


MONTAIGNE  179 

Holy  Writ  agrees  with  this,  Be  not  wiser 
than  you  should,  but  be  soberly  wise.  I  have 
known  a  great  man  prejudice  the  opinion 
men  had  of  his  devotion,  by  pretending  to 
be  devout  beyond  all  examples  of  others  of 
his  condition.  I  love  temperate  and  moderate 
natures.  An  immoderate  zeal,  even  to  that 
which  is  good,  even  though  it  does  not  offend, 
astonishes  me,  and  puts  me  to  study  what 
name  to  give  it.  Neither  the  mother  of 
Pausanias,  who  was  the  first  instructor  of 
her  son's  process,  and  threw  the  first  stone 
towards  his  death,  nor  Posthumius  the  dic- 
tator, who  put  his  son  to  death,  whom  the 
ardor  of  youth  had  successfully  pushed 
upon  the  enemy  a  little  more  advanced  than 
the  rest  of  his  squadron,  do  appear  to  me  so 
much  just  as  strange;  and  I  should  neither 
advise  nor  like  to  follow  so  savage  a  virtue, 
and  that  costs  so  dear.  The  archer  that 
shoots  over,  misses  as  much  as  he  that  falls 
short,  and  'tis  equally  troublesome  to  my 
sight,  to  look  up  at  a  great  light,  and  to  look 
down  into  a  dark  abyss.  Callicles  in  Plato 
says,  that  the  extremity  of  philosophy  is 
hurtful,  and  advises  not  to  dive  into  it  be- 


180  MONTAIGNE 

yond  the  limits  of  profit;  that,  taken  mod- 
erately, it  is  pleasant  and  nseful;  but  that  in 
the  end  it  renders  a  man  brutish  and  vicious, 
a  contemner  of  religion  and  the  common 
laws,  an  enemy  to  civil  conversation,  and  all 
human  pleasures,  incapable  of  all  public  ad- 
ministration, unfit  either  to  assist  others  or 
to  relieve  himself,  and  a  fit  object  for  all  sorts 
of  injuries  and  affronts.  He  says  true;  for  in 
its  excess,  it  enslaves  our  natural  freedom, 
and  by  an  impertinent  subtlety,  leads  us  out 
of  the  fair  and  beaten  way  that  nature  has 
traced  for  us. 

The  love  we  bear  to  our  wives  is  very  law- 
ful, and  yet  theology  thinks  fit  to  curb  and 
restrain  it.  As  I  remember,  I  have  read  in 
one  place  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  where  he 
condemns  marriages  within  any  of  the  for- 
bidden degrees,  for  this  reason,  amongst 
others,  that  there  is  some  danger,  lest  the 
friendship  a  man  bears  to  such  a  woman, 
should  be  immoderate;  for  if  the  conjugal 
affection  be  full  and  perfect  betwixt  them, 
as  it  ought  to  be,  and  that  it  be  over  and 
above  surcharged  with  that  of  kindred  too, 
there  is  no  doubt,  but  such  an  addition  will 


MONTAIGNE  181 

carry  the  husband  beyond  the  bounds  of  rea- 
son. 

Those  sciences  that  regulate  the  manners 
of  men,  divinity  and  philosophy,  will  have 
their  say  in  everything;  there  is  no  action  so 
private  and  secret  that  can  escape  their  in- 
spection and  jurisdiction.  They  are  best 
taught  who  are  best  able  to  control  and  curb 
their  own  liberty;  women  expose  their  nudi- 
ties as  much  as  you  will  upon  the  account  of 
pleasure,  though  in  the  necessities  of  physic 
they  are  altogether  as  shy.  I  will,  therefore, 
in  their  behalf  teach  the  husbands,  that  is, 
such  as  are  too  vehement  in  the  exercise  of 
the  matrimonial  duty — if  such  there  still  be 
— this  lesson,  that  the  very  pleasures  they 
enjoy  in  the  society  of  their  wives  are  re- 
proachable  if  immoderate,  and  that  a  licen- 
tious and  riotous  abuse  of  them  is  a  fault  as 
reprovable  here  as  in  illicit  connections. 
Those  immodest  and  debauched  tricks  and 
postures,  that  the  first  ardor  suggests  to  us 
in  this  affair,  are  not  only  indecently  but 
detrimentally  practised  upon  our  wives.  Let 
them  at  least  learn  impudence  from  another 
hand;  they  are  ever  ready  enough  for  our 


182  MONTAIGNE 

business,  and  I  for  my  part  always  went  the 
plain  way  to  work. 

Marriage  is  a  solemn  and  religions  tie,  and 
therefore  the  pleasure  we  extract  from  it 
should  be  a  sober  and  serious  delight,  and 
mixed  with  a  certain  kind  of  gravity;  it 
should  be  a  sort  of  discreet  and  conscientious 
pleasure.  And  seeing  that  the  chief  end  of 
it  is  generation,  some  make  a  question, 
whether  when  men  are  out  of  hopes  of  that 
fruit,  as  when  they  are  superannuated  or 
already  with  child,  it  be  lawful  to  embrace 
our  wives;  'tis  homicide,  according  to  Plato. 
Certain  nations  (the  Mohammedan,  amongst 
others)  abominate  all  conjunction  with 
women  with  child,  others  also,  with  those  who 
are  in  their  courses.  Zenobia  would  never 
admit  her  husband  for  more  than  one  en- 
counter, after  which  she  left  him  to  his  own 
swing  for  the  whole  time  of  her  conception, 
and  not  till  after  that  would  again  receive 
him;  a  brave  and  generous  example  of  con- 
jugal continence.  It  was  doubtless  from 
some  lascivious  poet,  and  one  that  himself 
was  in  great  distress  for  a  little  of  this  sport, 
that  Plato  borrowed  this  story;  that  Jupiter 


MONTAIGNE  183 

was  one  day  so  hot  upon  his  wife,  that  not 
having  so  much  patience  as  till  she  could  get 
to  the  couch,  he  threw  her  upon  the  floor, 
where  the  vehemence  of  pleasure  made  him 
forget  the  great  and  important  resolutions 
he  had  but  newly  taken  with  the  rest  of  the 
gods  in  his  celestial  council,  and  to  brag 
that  he  had  had  as  good  a  bout,  as  when  he 
got  her  maidenhead,  unknown  to  their 
parents. 

The  kings  of  Persia  were  wont  to  invite 
their  wives  to  the  beginning  of  their  festivals; 
but  when  the  wine  began  to  work  in  good 
earnest,  and  that  they  were  to  give  the  reins 
to  pleasure,  they  sent  them  back  to  their 
private  apartments,  that  they  might  not  par- 
ticipate in  their  immoderate  lust,  sending 
for  other  women  in  their  stead,  with  whom 
they  were  not  obliged  to  so  great  a  decorum 
of  respect.  All  pleasures  and  all  sorts  of 
gratifications  are  not  properly  and  fitly  con- 
ferred upon  all  sorts  of  persons.  Epami- 
nondas  had  committed  to  prison  a  young  man 
for  certain  debauches;  for  whom  Pelopidas 
mediated,  that  at  his  request  he  might  be  set 
at  liberty;  which  Epaminondas  denied  to  him, 


184  MONTAIGNE 

but  granted  it  at  the  first  word  to  a  wench 
of  his,  that  made  the  same  intercession;  say- 
ing, that  it  was  a  gratification  fit  for  such  a 
one  as  she,  but  not  for  a  captain.  Sophocles 
being  joint  praetor  with  Pericles,  seeing  ac- 
cidentally a  fine  boy  pass  by:  "0  what  a 
charming  boy  is  that ! ' '  said  he.  ' '  That  might 
be  very  well,"  answered  Pericles,  "for  any 
other  than  a  praetor,  who  ought  not  only  to 
have  his  hands,  but  his  eyes,  too,  chaste." 
Aelius  Verus,  the  emperor,  answered  his  wife, 
who  reproached  him  with  his  love  to  other 
women,  that  he  did  it  upon  a  conscientious 
account,  forasmuch  as  marriage  was  a  name 
of  honor  and  dignity,  not  of  wanton  and 
lascivious  desire;  and  our  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory preserves  the  memory  of  that  woman  in 
great  veneration,  who  parted  from  her  hus- 
band because  she  would  not  comply  with  his 
indecent  and  inordinate  desires.  In  fine, 
there  is  no  pleasure  so  just  and  lawful,  where 
intemperance  and  excess  are  not  to  be  con- 
demned. 

But,  to  speak  the  truth,  is  not  man  a  most 
miserable  creature  the  while?  It  is  scarce,  by 
his  natural  condition,  in  his  power  to  taste 


MONTAIGNE  185 

one  pleasure  pure  and  entire;  and  yet  must 
he  be  contriving  doctrines  and  precepts  to 
curtail  that  little  he  has;  he  is  not  yet 
wretched  enough,  unless  by  art  and  study  he 
augment  his  own  misery: — 

"We  have  augmented  by  art  the  wretched- 
ness of  fortune.' ' 

Human  wisdom  makes  as  ill  use  of  her 
talent,  when  she  exercises  it  in  rescinding 
from  the  number  and  sweetness  of  those 
pleasures  that  are  naturally  our  due,  as  she 
employs  it  favorably  and  well  in  artificially 
disguising  and  tricking  out  the  ills  of  life,  to 
alleviate  the  sense  of  them.  Had  I  ruled  the 
roast,  I  should  have  taken  another  and  more 
natural  course,  which,  to  say  the  truth,  is 
both  commodious  and  holy,  and  should,  per- 
adventure,  have  been  able  to  have  limited  it 
too;  notwithstanding  that  both  our  spiritual 
and  corporal  physicians,  as  by  compact  be- 
twixt themselves,  can  find  no  other  way  to 
cure,  nor  other  remedy  for  the  infirmities  of 
the  body  and  the  soul,  than  by  misery  and 
pain.  To  this  end,  watchings,  fastings,  hair- 
shirts,  remote  and  solitary  banishments,  per- 


186  MONTAIGNE 

petual  imprisonments,  whips  and  other  af- 
flictions, have  been  introduced  amongst  men: 
bnt  so,  that  they  should  carry  a  sting  with 
them,  and  be  real  afflictions  indeed;  and  not 
fall  ont  as  it  once  did  to  one  Gallio,  who  hav- 
ing been  sent  an  exile  into  the  isle  of  Lesbos, 
news  was  not  long  after  brought  to  Rome, 
that  he  there  lived  as  merry  as  the  day  was 
long;  and  that  what  had  been  enjoined  him 
for  a  penance,  turned  to  his  pleasure  and 
satisfaction:  whereupon  the  Senate  thought 
fit  to  recall  him  home  to  his  wife  and  family, 
and  confine  him  to  his  own  house,  to  accom- 
modate their  punishment  to  his  feeling  and 
apprehension.  For  to  him  whom  fasting 
would  make  more  healthful  and  more 
sprightly,  and  to  him  to  whose  palate  fish 
were  more  acceptable  than  flesh,  the  prescrip- 
tion of  these  would  have  no  curative  effect; 
no  more  than  in  the  other  sort  of  physic, 
where  drugs  have  no  effect  upon  him  who 
swallows  them  with  appetite  and  pleasure: 
the  bitterness  of  the  potion  and  the  abhor- 
rence of  the  patient  are  necessary  circum- 
stances to  the  operation.  The  nature  that 
would  eat    rhubarb    like    buttered   turnips, 


MONTAIGNE  187 

would  frustrate  the  use  and  virtue  of  it;  it 
must  be  something  to  trouble  and  disturb  the 
stomach,  that  must  purge  and  cure  it;  and 
here  the  common  rule,  that  things  are  cured 
by  their  contraries,  fails;  for  in  this  one  ill 
is  cured  by  another. 

This  belief  a  little  resembles  that  other  so 
ancient  one,  of  thinking  to  gratify  the  gods 
and  nature  by  massacre  and  murder:  an 
opinion  universally  once  received  in  all  reli- 
gions. And  still,  in  these  later  times  wherein 
our  fathers  lived,  Amurath  at  the  taking  of 
the  Isthmus,  immolated  six  hundred  young 
Greeks  to  his  father's  soul,  in  the  nature  of 
a  propitiatory  sacrifice  for  his  sins.  And  in 
those  new  countries  discovered  in  this  age 
of  ours,  which  are  pure  and  virgin  yet,  in 
comparison  of  ours,  this  practice  is  in  some 
measure  everywhere  received:  all  their  idols 
reek  with  human  blood,  not  without  various 
examples  of  horrid  cruelty:  some  they  burn 
alive,  and  take,  half  broiled,  off  the  coals  to 
tear  out  their  hearts  and  entrails ;  some,  even 
women,  they  flay  alive,  and  with  their  bloody 
skins  clothe  and  disguise  others.  Neither 
are  we  without  great  examples  of  constancy 


188  MONTAIGNE 

and  resolution  in  this  affair:  the  poor  souls 
that  are  to  be  sacrificed,  old  men,  women,  and 
children,  themselves  going  about  some  days 
before  to  beg  alms  for  the  offering  of  their 
sacrifice,  presenting  themselves  to  the 
slaughter,  singing  and  dancing  with  the 
spectators. 

The  ambassadors  of  the  king  of  Mexico, 
setting  out  to  Fernando  Cortez  the  power 
and  greatness  of  their  master,  after  having 
told  him,  that  he  had  thirty  vassals,  of  whom 
each  was  able  to  raise  an  hundred  thousand 
fighting  men,  and  that  he  kept  his  court  in 
the  fairest  and  best  fortified  city  under  the 
sun,  added  at  last,  that  he  was  obliged  yearly 
to  offer  to  the  gods  fifty  thousand  men.  And 
it  is  affirmed,  that  he  maintained  a  continual 
war,  with  some  potent  neighboring  nations, 
not  only  to  keep  the  young  men  in  exercise, 
but  principally  to  have  wherewithal  to  fur- 
nish his  sacrifices  with  his  prisoners  of  war. 
At  a  certain  town  in  another  place,  for  the 
welcome  of  the  said  Cortez,  they  sacrificed 
fifty  men  at  once.  I  will  tell  you  this  one  tale 
more,  and  I  have  done;  some  of  these  people 
being  beaten  by  him,  sent   to   acknowledge 


MONTAIGNE  189 

him,  and  to  treat  with  him  of  a  peace,  whose 
messengers  carried  him  three  sorts  of  gifts, 
which  they  presented  in  these  terms:  "Be- 
hold, lord,  here  are  five  slaves:  if  thou  art  a 
furious  god  that  feedeth  upon  flesh  and  blood, 
eat  these,  and  we  will  bring  thee  more;  if 
thou  art  an  affable  god,  behold  here  incense 
and  feathers;  but  if  thou  art  a  man,  take 
these  fowls  and  these  fruits  that  we  have 
brought  thee." 

OF  CANNIBALS 
WHEN  KING  PYRRHUS  invaded  Italy, 
having  viewed  and  considered  the  order  of 
the  army  the  Romans  sent  out  to  meet  him; 
"I  know  not,"  said  he,  "what  kind  of  bar- 
barians" (for  so  the  Greeks  called  all  other 
nations)  "these  may  be;  but  the  disposition 
of  this  army  that  I  see  has  nothing  of  bar- 
barism in  it."  As  much  said  the  Greeks  of 
that  which  Flaminius  brought  into  their 
country;  and  Philip,  beholding  from  an 
eminence  the  order  and  distribution  of  the 
Roman  camp  formed  in  his  kingdom  by 
Publius  Sulpicius  Galba,  spake  to  the  same 
effect.    By  which  it  appears  how  cautious 


190  MONTAIGNE 

men  ought  to  be  of  taking  things  upon  trust 
from  vulgar  opinion,  and  that  we  are  to  judge 
by  the  eye  of  reason,  and  not  from  common 
report. 

I  long  had  a  man  in  my  house  that  lived 
ten  or  twelve  years  in  the  New  World,  dis- 
covered in  these  latter  days,  and  in  that  part 
of  it  where  Villegaignon  landed,  which  he 
called  Antarctic  France.  This  discovery  of 
so  vast  a  country  seems  to  be  of  very  great 
consideration.  I  cannot  be  sure,  that  here- 
after there  may  not  be  another,  so  many  wiser 
men  than  we  having  been  deceived  in  this. 
I  am  afraid  our  eyes  are  bigger  than  our 
bellies,  and  that  we  have  more  curiosity  than 
capacity;  for  we  grasp  at  all,  but  catch  noth- 
ing but  wind. 

Plato  brings  in  Solon,  telling  a  story  that 
he  had  heard  from  the  priests  of  Sais  in 
Egypt,  that  of  old,  and  before  the  Deluge, 
there  was  a  great  island  called  Atlantis, 
situate  directly  at  the  mouth  of  the  straits  of 
Gibraltar,  which  contained  more  countries 
than  both  Africa  and  Asia  put  together;  and 
that  the  kings  of  that  country,  who  not  only 
possessed  that  Isle,  but  extended  their  do- 


MONTAIGNE  191 

minion  so  far  into  the  continent  that  they 
had  a  country  of  Africa  as  far  as  Egypt,  and 
extending  in  Europe  to  Tuscany,  attempted 
to  encroach  even  upon  Asia,  and  to  subjugate 
all  the  nations  that  border  upon  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea,  as  far  as  the  Black  Sea;  and  to 
that  effect  overran  all  Spain,  the  Gauls,  and 
Italy,  so  far  as  to  penetrate  into  Greece, 
where  the  Athenians  stopped  them:  but  that 
some  time  after,  both  the  Athenians,  and  they 
and  their  island,  were  swallowed  by  the 
Flood. 

It  is  very  likely  that  this  extreme  irrup- 
tion and  inundation  of  water  made  wonderful 
changes  and  alterations  in  the  habitations  of 
the  earth,  as  'tis  said  that  the  sea  then 
divided  Sicily  from  Italy: — 

"These  lands,  they  say,  formerly  with 
violence  and  vast  desolation  convulsed,  burst 
asunder,  where  before  both  were  one  coun- 
try." 

— Cyprus  from  Syria,  the  isle  of  Negropont 
from  the  continent  of  Boeotia,  and  elsewhere 
united  lands  that  were  separate  before,  by 
filling  up  the  channel  betwixt  them  with  sand 
and  mud: — 


192  MONTAIGNE 

"The  long-time  sterile  marsh,  adapted  for 
ships,  feeds  neighboring  cities,  and  feels  the 
heavy  plough." 

But  there  is  no  great  appearance  that  this 
isle  was  this  New  World  so  lately  discovered  : 
for  that  almost  touched  upon  Spain,  and  it 
were  an  incredible  effect  of  an  inundation,  to 
have  tumbled  back  so  prodigious  a  mass, 
above  twelve  hundred  leagues:  besides  that 
our  modern  navigators  have  already  almost 
discovered  it  to  be  no  island,  but  terra  firma, 
and  continent  with  the  East  Indies  on  the  one 
side,  and  with  the  lands  under  the  two  poles 
on  the  other  side;  or,  if  it  be  separate  from 
them,  it  is  by  so  narrow  a  strait  and  channel, 
that  it  none  the  more  deserves  the  name  of 
an  island  for  that. 

It  should  seem,  that  in  this  great  body, 
there  are  two  sorts  of  motions,  the  one 
natural  and  the  other  febrific,  as  there  are  in 
ours.  When  I  consider  the  impression  that 
our  river  of  Dordogne  has  made  in  my  time 
on  the  right  bank  of  its  descent,  and  that  in 
twenty  years  it  has  gained  so  much,  and  un- 
dermined the  foundations  of  so  many  houses, 
I  perceive  it  to  be  an  extraordinary  agita- 


MONTAIGNE  193 

tion:  for  had  it  always  followed  this  course, 
or  were  hereafter  to  do  it,  the  aspect  of  the 
world  would  be  totally  changed.  But  rivers 
alter  their  course,  sometimes  beating  against 
the  one  side,  and  sometimes  the  other,  and 
sometimes  quietly  keeping  the  channel.  I 
do  not  speak  of  sudden  inundations,  the 
causes  of  which  everybody  understands.  In 
Medoc,  by  the  seashore,  the  Sieur  d'Arsac, 
my  brother,  sees  an  estate  he  had  there, 
buried  under  the  sands  which  the  sea  vomits 
before  it:  where  the  tops  of  some  houses  are 
yet  to  be  seen,  and  where  his  rents  and 
domains  are  coverted  into  pitiful  barren  pas- 
turage. The  inhabitants  of  this  place  affirm, 
that  of  late  years  the  sea  has  driven  so 
vehemently  upon  them,  that  they  have  lost 
above  four  leagues  of  land.  These  sands  are 
her  harbingers:  and  we  now  see  great  heaps 
of  moving  sand,  that  march  half  a  league  be- 
fore her,  and  occupy  the  land. 

The  other  testimony  from  antiquity,  to 
which  some  would  apply  this  discovery  of 
the  New  World,  is  in  Aristotle;  at  least,  if 
that  little  book  of  Unheard-of  Miracles  be  his. 
He  there  tells  us,  that  certain  Carthaginians, 


194  MONTAIGLNE 

having  crossed  the  Atlantic  Sea  without  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar,  and  sailed  a  very  long 
time,  discovered  at  last  a  great  and  fruitful 
island,  all  covered  over  with  wood,  and 
watered  with  several  broad  and  deep  rivers, 
far  remote  from  all  terra  firma;  and  that  they, 
and  others  after  them,  allured  by  the  good- 
ness and  fertility  of  the  soil,  went  thither 
with  their  wives  and  children,  and  began  to 
plant  a  colony.  But  the  senate  of  Cathage 
perceiving  their  people  by  little  and  little  to 
diminish,  issued  out  an  express  prohibition, 
that  none,  upon  pain  of  death,  should  trans- 
port themselves  thither;  and  also  drove  out 
these  new  inhabitants;  fearing,  'tis  said,  lest 
in  process  of  time  they  should  so  multiply 
as  to  supplant  themselves  and  ruin  their  state. 
But  this  relation  of  Aristotle  no  more  agrees 
with  our  new-found  lands  than  the  other. 

This  man  that  I  had  was  a  plain  ignorant 
fellow,  and  therefore  the  more  likely  to  tell 
truth:  for  your  better-bred  sort  of  men  are 
much  more  curious  in  their  observation,  'tis 
true,  and  discover  a  great  deal  more;  but  then 
they  gloss  upon  it,  and  to  give  the  greater 
weight  to  what  they  deliver,  and  allure  your 


MONTAIGNE  195 

belief,  they  cannot  forbear  a  little  to  alter  the 
story;  they  never  represent  things  to  you 
simply  as  they  are,  but  rather  as  they  ap- 
peared to  them,  or  as  they  would  have  them 
appear  to  you,  and  to  gain  the  reputation  of 
men  of  judgment,  and  the  better  to  induce 
your  faith,  are  willing  to  help  out  the  busi- 
ness with  something  more  than  is  really  true, 
of  their  own  invention.  Now  in  this  case,  we 
should  either  have  a  man  of  irreproachable 
veracity,  or  so  simple  that  he  has  not  where- 
withal to  contrive,  and  to  give  a  color  of 
truth  to  false  relations,  and  who  can  have  no 
ends  in  forging  an  untruth.  Such  a  one  was 
mine;  and  besides,  he  has  at  divers  times 
brought  to  me  several  seamen  and  merchants 
who  at  the  same  time  went  the  same  voyage. 
I  shall  therefore  content  myself  with  his  in- 
formation, without  inquiring  what  the  cosmo- 
graphers  say  to  the  business.  We  should  have 
topographers  to  trace  out  to  us  the  particular 
places  where  they  have  been;  but  for  having 
had  this  advantage  over  us,  to  have  seen  the 
Holy  Land,  they  would  have  the  privilege, 
forsooth,  to  tell  us  stories  of  all  the  other 
parts  of  the  world  beside.  I  would  have  every 


196  MONTAIGNE 

one  write  what  he  knows,  and  as  much  as  he 
knows,  but  no  more;  and  that  not  in  this  only 
but  in  all  other  subjects;  for  such  a  person 
may  have  some  particular  knowledge  and  ex- 
perience of  the  nature  of  such  a  river,  or  such 
a  fountain,  who,  as  to  other  things,  knows  no 
more  than  what  everybody  does,  and  yet  to 
give  a  currency  to  his  little  pittance  of  learn- 
ing, will  undertake  to  write  the  whole  body 
of  physics:  a  vice  from  which  great  incon- 
veniences derive  their  original. 

Now,  to  return  to  my  subject,  I  find  that 
there  is  nothing  barbarous  and  savage  in  this 
nation,  by  anything  that  I  can  gather,  ex- 
cepting, that  every  one  gives  the  title  of  bar- 
barism to  everything  that  is  not  in  use  in  his 
own  country.  As,  indeed,  we  have  no  other 
level  of  truth  and  reason  than  the  example 
and  idea  of  the  opinions  and  customs  of  the 
place  wherein  we  live:  there  is  always  the 
perfect  religion,  there  the  perfect  govern- 
ment, there  the  most  exact  and  accomplished 
usage  of  all  things.  They  are  savages  at  the 
same  rate  that  we  say  fruits  are  wild,  which 
nature  produces  of  herself  and  by  her  own 
ordinary    progress;    whereas,    in  truth,    we 


MONTAIGNE  197 

ought  rather  to  call  those  wild  whose  natures 
we  have  changed  by  our  artifice  and  diverted 
from  the  common  order.  In  those,  the 
genuine,  most  useful,  and  natural  virtues  and 
properties  are  vigorous  and  sprightly,  which 
we  have  helped  to  degenerate  in  these,  by  ac- 
commodating them  to  the  pleasure  of  our 
own  corrupted  palate.  And  yet  for  all  this, 
our  taste  confesses  a  flavor  and  delicacy  ex- 
cellent even  to  emulation  of  the  best  of  ours, 
in  several  fruits  wherein  those  countries 
abound  without  art  or  culture.  Neither  is  it 
reasonable  that  art  should  gain  the  pre-emin- 
ence of  our  great  and  powerful  mother 
nature.  We  have  so  surcharged  her  with  the 
additional  ornaments  and  graces  we  have 
added  to  the  beauty  and  riches  of  her  own 
works  by  our  inventions,  that  we  have  almost 
smothered  her;  yet  in  other  places,  where  she 
shines  in  her  own  purity  and  proper  lustre, 
she  marvellously  baffles  and  disgraces  all  our 
vain  and  frivolous  attempts: — 

"And  the  ivy  grows  best  spontaneously, 
the  arbutus  best  in  solitary  caves;  and  the 
birds  sing  more  sweetly  without  art." 


198  MONTAIGNE 

Our  utmost  endeavors  cannot  arrive  at  so 
much  as  to  imitate  the  nest  of  the  least  of 
birds,  its  contexture,  beauty,  and  con- 
venience: not  so  much  as  the  web  of  a  poor 
spider. 

All  things,  says  Plato,  are  produced  either 
by  nature,  by  fortune,  or  by  art;  the  greatest 
and  most  beautiful  by  the  one  or  the  other  of 
the  former,  the  least  and  the  most  imperfect 
by  the  last. 

These  nations  then  seem  to  me  to  be  so  far 
barbarous,  as  having  received  but  very  little 
form  and  fashion  from  art  and  human  inven- 
tion, and  consequently  to  be  not  much  remote 
from  their  original  simplicity.  The  laws  of 
nature,  however,  govern  them  still,  not  as  yet 
much  vitiated  with  any  mixture  of  ours:  but 
'tis  in  such  purity,  that  I  am  sometimes 
troubled  we  were  not  sooner  acquainted  with 
these  people,  and  that  they  were  not  discov- 
ered in  those  better  times,  where  there  were 
men  much  more  able  to  judge  of  them  than 
we  are.  I  am  sorry  that  Lycurgus  and  Plato 
had  no  knowledge  of  them;  for  to  my  appre- 
hension, what  we  now  see  in  those  nations, 
does  not  only  surpass  all  the  pictures  with 


MONTAIGNE  199 

which  the  poets  have  adorned  the  golden  age, 
and  all  their  inventions  in  feigning  a  happy 
state  of  man,  but,  moreover,  the  fancy  and 
even  the  wish  and  desire  of  philosophy  itself; 
so  native  and  so  pnre  a  simplicity,  as  we  by 
experience  see  to  be  in  them,  could  never 
enter  into  their  imagination,  nor  could  they 
ever  believe  that  human  society  could  have 
been  maintained  with  so  little  artifice  and 
human  patchwork.  I  should  tell  Plato  that  it 
is  a  nation  wherein  there  is  no  manner  of 
traffic,  no  knowledge  of  letters,  no  science  of 
numbers,  no  name  of  magistrate  or  political 
superiority;  no  use  of  service,  riches  or 
poverty,  no  contracts,  no  successions,  no 
dividends,  no  properties,  no  employments, 
but  those  of  leisure,  no  respect  of  kindred, 
but  common,  no  clothing,  no  agriculture,  no 
metal,  no  use  of  corn  or  wine ;  the  very  words 
that  signify  lying,  treachery,  dissimulation, 
avarice,  envy,  detraction,  pardon,  never 
heard  of.  How  much  would  he  find  his  imagi- 
nary Republic  short  of  his  perfection? — 

"Men  not  far  removed  from  the  gods." 

0 

"These  manners  nature  first  inculcated.' ■ 


200  MONTAIGNE 

As  to  the  rest,  they  live  in  a  country  very 
pleasant  and  temperate,  so  that,  as  my  wit- 
ness informed  me,  'tis  rare  to  hear  of  a  sick 
person,  and  they  moreover  assure  me,  that 
they  never  saw  any  of  the  natives,  either 
paralytic,  blear-eyed,  toothless,  or  crooked 
with  age.  The  situation  of  their  country  is 
along  the  sea-shore,  enclosed  on  the  other  side 
towards  the  land,  with  great  and  high  moun- 
tains, having  about  a  hundred  leagues  in 
breadth  between.  They  have  great  store  of 
fish  and  flesh,  that  have  no  resemblance  to 
those  of  ours;  which  they  eat  without  any 
other  cookery,  than  plain  boiling,  roasting, 
and  broiling.  The  first  that  rode  a  horse 
thither,  though  in  several  other  voyages  he 
had  contracted  an  acquaintance  and  familiar- 
ity with  them,  put  them  into  so  terrible  a 
fright,  with  his  centaur  appearance,  that  they 
killed  him  with  their  arrows  before  they 
could  come  to  discover  who  he  was.  Their 
buildings  are  very  long,  and  of  capacity  to 
hold  two  or  three  hundred  people,  made  of 
the  barks  of  tall  trees,  reared  with  one  end 
upon  the  ground,  and  leaning  to  and  support- 
ing one  another  at  the  top,  like  some  of  our 


MONTAIGNE  201 

barns,  of  which  the  covering  hangs  down  to 
the  very  ground,  and  serves  for  the  side 
walls.  They  have  wood  so  hard,  that  they 
cut  with  it,  and  make  their  swords  of  it,  and 
their  grills  of  it  to  broil  their  meat.  Their 
beds  are  of  cotton,  hung  swinging  from  the 
roof,  like  our  seamen 's  hammocks,  every  man 
his  own,  for  the  wives  lie  apart  from  their 
husbands.  They  rise  with  the  sun,  and  so 
soon  as  they  are  up,  eat  for  all  day,  for  they 
have  no  more  meals  but  that;  they  do  not  then 
drink,  as  Suidas  reports  of  some  other  people 
of  the  East  that  never  drank  at  their  meals; 
but  drink  very  often  all  day  after,  and  some- 
times to  a  rousing  pitch.  Their  drink  is  made 
of  a  certain  root,  and  is  of  the  color  of  our 
claret,  and  they  never  drink  it  but  luke  warm. 
It  will  not  keep  above  two  or  three  days;  it 
has  a  somewhat  sharp,  brisk  taste,  is  nothing 
heady,  but  very  comfortable  to  the  stomach; 
laxative  to  strangers,  but  a  very  pleasant 
beverage  to  such  as  are  accustomed  to  it. 
They  make  use,  instead  of  bread,  of  a  certain 
white  compound,  like  coriander  seeds;  I  have 
tasted  of  it ;  the  taste  is  sweet  and  a  little  flat. 
The  whole  day  is  spent  in  dancing.    Their 


202  MONTAIGNE 

young  men  go  a-hnnting  after  wild  beasts 
with  bows  and  arrows;  one  part  of  their 
women  are  employed  in  preparing  their  drink 
the  while,  which  is  their  chief  employment. 
One  of  their  old  men,  in  the  morning  before 
they  fall  to  eating,  preaches  to  the  whole 
family,  walking  from  the  one  end  of  the  house 
to  the  other,  and  several  times  repeating  the 
same  sentence,  till  he  has  finished  the  round, 
for  their  houses  are  at  least  a  hundred  yards 
long.  Valor  towards  their  enemies  and  love 
towards  their  wives,  are  the  two  heads  of  his 
discourse,  never  failing  in  the  close,  to  put 
them  in  mind,  that  'tis  their  wives  who  pro- 
vide them  their  drink  warm  and  well  sea- 
soned. The  fashion  of  their  beds,  ropes, 
swords,  and  of  the  wooden  bracelets  they  tie 
about  their  wrists,  when  they  go  to  fight,  and 
of  the  great  canes,  bored  hollow  at  one  end, 
by  the  sound  of  which  they  keep  the  cadence 
of  their  dances,  are  to  be  seen  in  several 
places,  and  amongst  others,  at  my  house. 
They  shave  all  over,  and  much  more  neatly 
than  we,  without  other  razor  than  one  of 
wood  or  stone.  They  believe  in  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  and  that  those  who  have 


MONTAIGNE  203 

merited  well  of  the  gods  are  lodged  in  that 
part  of  heaven  where  the  sun  rises,  and  the 
accursed  in  the  west. 

They  have  I  know  not  what  kind  of  priests 
and  prophets,  who  very  rarely  present  them- 
selves to  the  people,  having  their  abode  in 
the  mountains.  At  their  arrival,  there  is  a 
great  feast,  and  solemn  assembly  of  many  vil- 
lages :  each  house,  as  I  have  described,  makes 
a  village,  and  they  are  about  a  French  league 
distant  from  one  another.  This  prophet  de- 
claims to  them  in  public,  exhorting  them  to 
virtue  and  their  duty:  but  all  their  ethics  are 
comprised  in  these  two  articles,  resolution  in 
war,  and  affection  to  their  wives.  He  also 
prophesies  to  them  events  to  come,  and  the 
issues  they  are  to  expect  from  their  enter- 
prises, and  prompts  them  to  or  diverts  them 
from  war:  but  let  him  look  to't;  for  if  he  fail 
in  his  divination,  and  anything  happen  other- 
wise than  he  has  foretold,  he  is  cut  into  a 
thousand  pieces,  if  he  be  caught,  and  con- 
demned for  a  false  prophet:  for  that  reason, 
if  any  of  them  has  been  mistaken,  he  is  no 
more  heard  of. 

Divination  is  a  gift  of  God,  and  therefore 


204  MONTAIGNE 

to  abuse  it,  ought  to  be  a  punishable  impos- 
ture. Amongst  the  Scythians,  where  their 
diviners  failed  in  the  promised  effect,  they 
were  laid,  bound  hand  and  foot,  upon  carts 
loaded  with  firs  and  bavins,  and  drawn  by 
oxen,  on  which  they  were  burned  to  death. 
Such  as  only  meddle  with  things  subject  to 
the  conduct  of  human  capacity,  are  excusable 
in  doing  the  best  they  can:  but  those  other 
fellows  that  come  to  delude  us  with  assur- 
ances of  an  extraordinary  faculty,  beyond  our 
understanding,  ought  they  not  to  be  punished, 
when  they  do  not  make  good  the  effect  of 
their  promise,  and  for  the  temerity  of  their 
imposture? 

They  have  continual  war  with  the  nations 
that  live  further  within  the  mainland,  be- 
yond their  mountains,  to  which  they  go 
naked,  and  without  other  arms  than  their 
bows  and  wooden  swords,  fashioned  at  one 
end  like  the  head  of  our  javelins.  The 
obstinacy  of  their  battles  is  wonderful,  and 
they  never  end  without  great  effusion  of 
blood:  for  as  to  running  away,  they  know  not 
what  it  is.  Every  one  for  a  trophy  brings 
home  the  head  of  an  enemy  he  has  killed, 


MONTAIGNE  205 

which  he  fixes  over  the  door  of  his  house. 
After  having  a  long  time  treated  their  pris- 
oners very  well,  and  given  them  all  the 
regales  they  can  think  of,  he  to  whom  the 
prisoner  belongs,  invites  a  great  assembly 
of  his  friends.  They  being  come,  he  ties  a 
rope  to  one  of  the  arms  of  the  prisoner,  of 
which,  at  a  distance,  out  of  his  reach,  he 
holds  the  one  end  himself,  and  gives  to  the 
friend  he  loves  best  the  other  arm  to  hold 
after  the  same  manner;  which  being  done, 
they  two,  in  the  presence  of  all  the  assembly, 
despatch  him  with  their  swords.  After  that, 
they  roast  him,  eat  him  amongst  them,  and 
send  some  chops  to  their  absent  friends. 
They  do  not  do  this,  as  some  think,  for  nour- 
ishment, as  the  Scythians  anciently  did,  but 
as  a  representation  of  an  extreme  revenge ;  as 
will  appear  by  this:  that  having  observed  the 
Portuguese,  who  were  in  league  with  their 
enemies,  to  inflict  another  sort  of  death  upon 
any  of  them  they  took  prisoners,  which  was 
to  set  them  up  to  the  girdle  in  the  earth,  to 
shoot  at  the  remaining  part  till  it  was  stuck 
full  of  arrows,  and  then  to  hang  them,  they 
thought  those  people  of  the  other  world  (as 


206  MONTAIGNE 

being  men  who  had  sown  the  knowledge  of  a 
great  many  vices  amongst  their  neighbors, 
and  who  were  much  greater  masters  in  all 
sorts  of  mischief  than  they)  did  not  exercise 
this  sort  of  revenge  without  a  meaning,  and 
that  it  must  needs  be  more  painful  than 
theirs,  they  began  to  leave  their  old  way,  and 
to  follow  this.  I  am  not  sorry  that  we  should 
here  take  notice  of  the  barbarous  horror  of 
so  cruel  an  action,  but  that,  seeing  so  clearly 
into  their  faults,  we  should  be  so  blind  to 
our  own.  I  conceive  there  is  more  barbarity 
in  eating  a  man  alive,  than  when  he  is  dead; 
in  tearing  a  body  limb  from  limb  by  racks 
and  torments,  that  is  yet  in  perfect  sense;  in 
roasting  it  by  degrees;  in  causing  it  to  be 
bitten  and  worried  by  dogs  and  swine  (as  we 
have  not  only  read,  but  lately  seen,  not 
amongst  inveterate  and  mortal  enemies,  but 
among  neighbors  and  fellow-citizens,  and, 
which  is  worse,  under  color  of  piety  and  re- 
ligion), than  to  roast  and  eat  him  after  he  is 
dead. 

Chrysippus  and  Zeno,  the  two  heads  of  the 
Stoic  sect,  were  of  opinion  that  there  was  no 
hurt  in  making  use  of  our  dead  carcasses,  in 


MONTAIGNE  207 

what  way  soever  for  our  necessity,  and  in 
feeding  upon  them  too ;  as  our  own  ancestors, 
who  being  besieged  by  Caesar  in  the  city 
Alexia,  resolved  to  sustain  the  famine  of  the 
siege  with  the  bodies  of  their  old  men, 
women,  and  other  persons  who  were  in- 
capable of  bearing  arms: — 

"Vascones,  ut  fama  est,  aliment  is  talibns  usi 
Produxere  animas." 

And  the  physicians  make  no  bones  of  em- 
ploying it  to  all  sorts  of  use,  either  to  apply 
it  outwardly;  or  to  give  it  inwardly  for  the 
health  of  the  patient.  But  there  never  was 
any  opinion  so  irregular,  as  to  excuse 
treachery,  disloyalty,  tyranny,  and  cruelty, 
which  are  our  familiar  vices.  We  may  then 
call  these  people  barbarous,  in  respect  to  the 
rules  of  reason:  but  not  in  respect  to  our- 
selves, who  in  all  sorts  of  barbarity  exceed 
them.  Their  wars  are  throughout  noble  and 
generous,  and  carry  as  much  excuse  and  fair 
pretence,  as  that  human  malady  is  capable 
of;  having  with  them  no  other  foundation 
than  the  sole  jealousy  of  valor.  Their  dis- 
putes are  not  for  the  conquest  of  new  lands, 


208  MONTAIGNE 

for  these  they  already  possess  are  so  fruitful 
by  nature,  as  to  supply  them  without  labor 
or  concern,  with  all  things  necessary,  in  such 
abundance  that  they  have  no  need  to  enlarge 
their  borders.  And  they  are,  moreover, 
happy  in  this,  that  they  only  covet  so  much 
as  their  natural  necessities  require:  all  be- 
yond that  is  superfluous  to  them:  men  of  the 
same  age  call  one  another  generally  brothers, 
those  who  are  younger,  children;  and  the  old 
men  are  fathers  to  all.  These  leave  to  their 
heirs  in  common  the  full  possession  of  goods, 
without  any  manner  of  division,  or  other  title 
than  what  nature  bestows  upon  her  creatures, 
in  bringing  them  into  the  world.  If  their 
neighbors  pass  over  the  mountains  to  as- 
sault them,  and  obtain  a  victory,  all  the  vic- 
tors gain  by  it  is  glory  only,  and'  the  ad- 
vantage of  having  proved  themselves  the  bet- 
ter in  valor  and  virtue:  for  they  never 
meddle  with  the  goods  of  the  conquered,  but 
presently  return  into  their  own  country, 
where  they  have  no  want  of  anything  neces- 
sary, nor  of  this  greatest  of  all  goods,  to 
know  happily  how  to  enjoy  their  condition 
and  to  be  content.  And  those  in  turn  do  the 
same;  they  demand  of  their  prisoners  no  other 


MONTAIGNE  209 

ransom,  than  acknowledgment  that  they  are 
overcome:  but  there  is  not  one  found  in  an 
age,  who  will  not  rather  choose  to  die  than 
make  snch  a  confession,  or  either  by  word  or 
look  recede  from  the  entire  grandeur  of  an 
invincible  courage.  There  is  not  a  man 
amongst  them  who  had  not  rather  be  killed 
and  eaten,  than  so  much  as  to  open  his  mouth 
to  entreat  he  may  not.  They  use  them  with 
all  liberality  and  freedom,  to  the  end  their 
lives  may  be  so  much  the  dearer  to  them;  but 
frequently  entertain  them  with  menaces  of 
their  approaching  death,  of  the  torments  they 
are  to  suffer,  of  the  preparations  making  in 
order  to  it,  of  the  mangling  their  limbs,  and 
of  the  feast  that  is  to  be  made,  where  their 
carcass  is  to  be  the  only  dish.  All  which  they 
do,  to  no  other  end,  but  only  to  extort  some 
gentle  or  submissive  word  from  them,  or  to 
frighten  them  so  as  to  make  them  run  away, 
to  obtain  this  advantage  that  they  were  ter- 
rified, and  that  their  constancy  was  shaken; 
and  indeed,  if  rightly  taken,  it  is  in  this  point 
only  that  a  true  victory  consists: — 

"No  victory  is  complete,  which  the  con- 
quered do  not  admit  to  be  so." 


210  MONTAIGNE 

The  Hungarians,  a  very  warlike  people, 
never  pretend  further  than  to  reduce  the 
enemy  to  their  discretion;  for  having  forced 
this  confession  from  them,  they  let  them  go 
without  injury  or  ransom,  excepting,  at  the 
most,  to  make  them  engage  their  word  never 
to  bear  arms  against  them  again.  We  have 
sufficient  advantages  over  our  enemies  that 
are  borrowed  and  not  truly  our  own;  it  is  the 
quality  of  a  porter,  and  no  effect  of  virtue,  to 
have  stronger  arms  and  legs ;  it  is  a  dead  and 
corporeal  quality  to  set  in  array;  'tis  a  turn 
of  fortune  to  make  our  enemy  stumble,  or  to 
dazzle  him  with  the  light  of  the  sun;  'tis  a 
trick  of  science  and  art,  and  that  may  happen 
in  a  mean  base  fellow,  to  be  a  good  fencer. 
The  estimate  and  value  of  a  man  consist  in 
the  heart  and  in  the  will:  there  his  true 
honor  lies.  Valor  is  stability,  not  of  legs 
and  arms,  but  of  the  courage  and  the  soul;  it 
does  not  lie  in  the  goodness  of  our  horse  or 
our  arms:  but  in  our  own.  He  that  falls 
obstinate  in  his  courage — 

"If  he  falls,  he  fights  from  his  knee;" 

—he  who,  for  any  danger  of  imminent  death, 


MONTAIGNE  211 

abates  nothing  of  his  assurance;  who,  dying, 
yet  darts  at  his  enemy  a  fierce  and  disdain- 
ful look,  is  overcome  not  by  us,  but  by  for- 
tune; he  is  killed,  not  conquered;  the  most 
valiant  are  sometimes  the  most  unfortunate. 
There  are  defeats  more  triumphant  than  vic- 
tories. Never  could  those  four  sister  vic- 
tories, the  fairest  the  sun  ever  beheld,  of 
Salamis,  Plataea,  Mycale,  and  Sicily,  venture 
to  oppose  all  their  united  glories,  to  the  single 
glory  of  the  discomfiture  of  King  Leonidas 
and  his  men,  at  the  pass  of  Thermopylae. 
Whoever  ran  with  a  more  glorious  desire  and 
greater  ambition,  to  the  winning,  than  Cap- 
tain Iscolas  to  the  certain  loss  of  a  battle! 
Who  could  have  found  out  a  more  subtle  in- 
vention to  secure  his  safety,  than  he  did  to 
assure  his  destruction?  He  was  set  to  de- 
fend a  certain  pass  of  Peloponnesus  against 
the  Arcadians,  which,  considering  the  nature 
of  the  place  and  the  inequality  of  forces,  find- 
ing it  utterly  impossible  for  him  to  do,  and 
seeing  that  all  who  were  presented  to  the 
enemy,  must  certainly  be  left  upon  the  place; 
and  on  the  other  side,  reputing  it  unworthy 
of  his  own  virtue  and  magnanimity  and  of 


212  MONTAIGNE 

the  Lacedaemonian  name  to  fail  in  any  part 
of  his  duty,  he  chose  a  mean  betwixt  these 
two  extremes  after  this  manner;  the  youngest 
and  most  active  of  his  men,  he  preserved  for 
the  service  and  defence  of  their  country,  and 
sent  them  back;  and  with  the  rest,  whose  loss 
would  be  of  less  consideration,  he  resolved  to 
make  good  the  pass,  and  with  the  death  of 
them,  to  make  the  enemy  buy  their  entry  as 
dear  as  possibly  he  could;  as  it  fell  out,  for 
being  presently  environed  on  all  sides  by  the 
Arcadians,  after  having  made  a  great 
slaughter  of  the  enemy,  he  and  his  were  all 
cut  in  pieces.  Is  there  any  trophy  dedicated  to 
the  conquerors  which  was  not  much  more  due 
to  these  who  were  overcome?  The  part  that 
true  conquering  is  to  play,  lies  in  the  en- 
counter, not  in  the  coming  off;  and  the  honor 
of  valor  consists  in  fighting,  not  in  subduing. 
But  to  return  to  my  story:  these  prisoners 
are  so  far  from  discovering  the  least  weak- 
ness, for  all  the  terrors  that  can  be  repre- 
sented to  them,  that,  on  the  contrary,  during 
the  two  or  three  months  they  are  kept,  they 
always  appear  with  a  cheerful  countenance; 
importune    their    masters    to    make    haste 


MONTAIGNE  213 

to  bring  them  to  the  test,  defy,  rail 
at  them,  and  reproach  them  with 
cowardice,  and  the  number  of  battles 
they  have  lost  against  those  of  their  country. 
I  have  a  song  made  by  one  of  these  prisoners, 
wherein  he  bids  them  "come  all,  and  dine 
upon  him,  and  welcome,  for  they  shall  withal 
eat  their  own  fathers  and  grandfathers,  whose 
flesh  has  served  to  feed  and  nourish  him. 
Those  muscles,"  says  he,  "this  flesh  and  these 
veins,  are  your  own;  poor  silly  souls  as  you 
are,  you  little  think  that  the  substance  of 
your  ancestors'  limbs  is  here  yet;  notice  what 
you  eat,  and  you  will  find  in  it  the  taste  of 
your  own  flesh:"  in  which  song  there  is  to 
be  observed  an  invention  that  nothing  relishes 
of  the  barbarian.  Those  that  paint  these 
people  dying  after  this  manner,  represent  the 
prisoner  spitting  in  the  faces  of  his  execu- 
tioners and  making  wry  mouths  at  them. 
And  'tis  most  certain,  that  to  the  very  last 
gasp,  they  never  cease  to  brave  and  defy  them 
both  in  word  and  gesture.  In  plain  truth, 
these  men  are  very  savage  in  comparison  of 
us;  of  necessity,  they  must  either  be  abso- 
lutely so  or  else  we  are  savages;  for  there  is 


214  MONTAIGNE 

a  vast  difference  betwixt  their  manners  and 
ours. 

The  men  there  have  several  wives,  and  so 
mnch  the  greater  number,  by  how  much  they 
have  the  greater  reputation  for  valor.  And 
it  is  one  very  remarkable  feature  in  their 
marriages,  that  the  same  jealousy  our  wives 
have  to  hinder  and  divert  us  from  the  friend- 
ship and  familiarity  of  other  women,  those 
employ  to  promote  their  husbands'  desires, 
and  to  procure  them  many  spouses;  for  being 
above  all  things  solicitous  of  their  husbands' 
honor,  'tis  their  chiefest  care  to  seek  out,  and 
to  bring  in  the  most  companions  they  can, 
forasmuch  as  it  is  a  testimony  of  the  hus- 
band's virtue.  Most  of  our  ladies  will  cry 
out,  that  'tis  monstrous;  whereas  in  truth  it 
is  not  so,  but  a  truly  matrimonial  virtue,  and 
of  the  highest  form.  In  the  Bible,  Sarah, 
with  Leah  and  Rachel,  the  two  wives  of 
Jacob,  gave  the  most  beautiful  of  their  hand- 
maids to  their  husbands;  Li  via  preferred  the 
passions  of  Augustus  to  her  own  interest;  and 
the  wife  of  King  Deiotarus,  Stratonice,  did 
not  only  give  up  a  fair  young  maid  that 
served  her  to  her  husband's  embraces,  but 


MONTAIGNE  215 

moreover  carefully  brought  up  the  children 
he  had  by  her,  and  assisted  them  in  the  suc- 
cession to  their  father's  crown. 

And  that  it  may  not  be  supposed,  that  all 
this  is  done  by  a  simple  and  servile  obliga- 
tion to  their  common  practice,  or  by  any  au- 
thoritative impression  of  their  ancient  cus- 
tom, without  judgment  or  reasoning,  and 
from  having  a  soul  so  stupid  that  it  cannot 
contrive  what  else  to  do,  I  must  here  give 
you  some  touches  of  their  sufficiency  in  point 
of  understanding.  Besides  what  I  repeated  to 
you  before,  which  was  one  of  their  songs  of 
war,  I  have  another,  a  love-song,  that  begins 
thus:  "Stay,  adder,  stay,  that  by  thy  pat- 
tern my  sister  may  draw  the  fashion  and  work 
of  a  rich  ribbon,  that  I  may  present  to  my  be- 
loved, by  which  means  thy  beauty  and  the 
excellent  order  of  thy  scales  shall  for  ever  be 
preferred  before  all  other  serpents."  Wherein 
the  first  couplet,  "Stay,  adder,"  &c,  makes 
the  burden  of  the  song.  Now  I  have  con- 
versed enough  with  poetry  to  judge  thus 
much:  that  not  only  there  is  nothing  bar- 
barous in  this  invention,  but,  moreover,  that 
it  is  perfectly  Anacreontic.  To  which  may  be 


216  MONTAIGNE 

added,  that  their  language  is  soft,  of  a  pleas- 
ing accent,  and  something  bordering  upon 
the  Greek  termination. 

Three  of  these  people,  not  foreseeing  how 
dear  their  knowledge  of  the  corruptions  of 
this  part  of  the  world  will  one  day  cost  their 
happiness  and  repose,  and  that  the  effect  of 
this  commerce  will  be  their  ruin,  as  I  pre- 
suppose it  is  in  a  very  fair  way  (miserable 
men  to  suffer  themselves  to  be  deluded  with 
desire  of  novelty  and  to  have  left  the  serenity 
of  their  own  heaven  to  come  so  far  to  gaze 
at  ours!),  were  at  Rouen  at  the  time  that  the 
late  King  Charles  IX.  was  there.  The  king 
himself  talked  to  them  a  good  while,  and 
they  were  made  to  see  our  fashions,  our 
pomp,  and  the  form  of  a  great  city.  After 
which,  some  one  asked  their  opinion,  and 
would  know  of  them,  what  of  all  the  things 
they  had  seen  they  found  most  to  be  ad- 
mired? To  which  they  made  answer,  three 
things,  of  which  I  have  forgotten  the  third, 
and  am  troubled  at  it,  but  two  I  yet  remem- 
ber. They  said,  that  in  the  first  place  they 
thought  it  very  strange  that  so  many  tall  men, 
wearing  beards,  strong,  and  well  armed,  who 


MONTAIGNE  217 

were  about  the  king  ('tis  like  they  meant 
the  Swiss  of  the  guard),  should  submit  to 
obey  a  child,  and  that  they  did  not  rather 
choose  out  one  amongst  themselves  to  com- 
mand. Secondly  (they  have  a  way  of  speak- 
ing in  their  language  to  call  men  the  half  of 
one  another),  that  they  had  observed  that 
there  were  amongst  us  men  full  and  crammed 
with  all  manner  of  commodities,  whilst,  in 
the  meantime,  their  halves  were  begging  at 
their  doors,  lean  and  half-starved  with  hun- 
ger and  poverty;  and  they  thought  it  strange 
that  these  necessitous  halves  were  able  to 
suffer  so  great  an  inequality  and  injustice, 
and  that  they  did  not  take  the  others  by  the 
throats,  or  set  fire  to  their  houses. 

I  talked  to  one  of  them  a  great  while  to- 
gether, but  I  had  so  ill  an  interpreter,  and 
one  who  was  so  perplexed  by  his  own  ignor- 
ance to  apprehend  my  meaning,  that  I  could 
get  nothing  out  of  him  of  any  moment.  Ask- 
ing him  what  advantage  he  reaped  from  the 
superiority  he  had  amongst  his  own  people 
(for  he  was  a  captain,  and  our  mariners 
called  him  king),  he  told  me,  to  march  at 
the  head  of  them  to  war.  Demanding  of  him 


218  MONTAIGNE 

further  how  many  men  he  had  to  follow  him, 
he  showed  me  a  space  of  ground,  to  signify 
as  many  as  could  march  in  such  a  compass, 
which  might  be  four  or  five  thousand  men; 
and  putting  the  question  to  him  whether  or 
no  his  authority  expired  with  the  war,  he 
told  me  this  remained:  that  when  he  went  to 
visit  the  villages  of  his  dependence,  they 
planed  him  paths  through  the  thick  of  their 
woods,  by  which  he  might  pass  at  his  ease. 
All  this  does  not  sound  very  ill,  and  the  last 
was  not  at  all  amiss,  for  they  wear  no 
breeches. 

THAT  IT  IS  MEET  TO  INTEEVENE  DIS- 
CREETLY IN  JUDGING  THE 
DIVINE  ORDINANCES 

THE  TRUE  field  and  subject  of  imposture 
are  things  unknown,  forasmuch  as,  in  the  first 
place,  their  very  strangeness  lends  them 
credit,  and  moreover,  by  not  being  subjected 
to  our  ordinary  reasons,  they  deprive  us  of 
the  means  to  question  and  dispute  them. 
For  which  reason,  says  Plato,  it  is  much  more 
easy  to  satisfy  the  hearers,  when  speaking  of 


MONTAIGNE  219 

the  nature  of  the  gods  than  of  the  nature  of 
men,  because  the  ignorance  of  the  auditory 
affords  a  fair  and  large  career  and  all  manner 
of  liberty  in  the  handling  of  abstruse  things. 
Thence  it  comes  to  pass,  that  nothing  is  so 
firmly  believed,  as  what  we  least  know;  nor 
any  people  so  confident,  as  those  who  enter- 
tain us  with  fables,  such  as  your  alchemists, 
judicial  astrologers,  fortune-tellers,  and 
physicians: — 

"All  that  sort  of  people.' ' 

To  which  I  would  willingly,  if  I  durst,  join 
a  pack  of  people  that  take  upon  them  to  in- 
terpret and  control  the  designs  of  God  Him- 
self, pretending  to  find  out  the  cause  of  every 
accident,  and  to  pry  into  the  secrets  of  the 
divine  will,  there  to  discover  the  incompre- 
hensible motive,  of  His  works;  and  although 
the  variety,  and  the  continual  discordance  of 
events,  throw  them  from  corner  to  corner,  and 
toss  them  from  east  to  west,  yet  do  they  still 
persist  in  their  vain  inquisition,  and  with  the 
same  pencil  to  paint  black  and  white. 

In  a  nation  of  the  Indies,  there  is  this  com- 
mendable custom,  that  when  anything  befalls 


220  MONTAIGNE 

them  amiss  in  any  encounter  or  battle,  they 
publicly  ask  pardon  of  the  sun,  who  is  their 
god,  as  having  committed  an  unjust  action, 
always  imputing  their  good  or  evil  fortune  to 
the  divine  justice,  and  to  that  submitting 
their  own  judgment  and  reason.  'Tis  enough 
for  a  Christian  to  believe  that  all  things  come 
from  God,  to  receive  them  with  acknowledg- 
ment of  His  divine  and  inscrutable  wisdom, 
and  also  thankfully  to  accept  and  receive 
them,  with  what  face  soever  they  may  present 
themselves.  But  I  do  not  approve  of  what  I 
see  in  use,  that  is,  to  seek  to  affirm  and  sup- 
port our  religion  by  the  prosperity  of  our  en- 
terprises. Our  belief  has  other  foundation 
enough,  without  going  about  to  authorize  it 
by  events:  for  the  people  being  accustomed  to 
such  plausible  arguments  as  these  and  so 
proper  to  their  taste,  it  is  to  be  feared,  lest 
when  they  fail  of  success  they  should  also 
stagger  in  their  faith:  as  in  the  war  wherein 
we  are  now  engaged  upon  the  account  of  re- 
ligion, those  who  had  the  better  in  the  busi- 
ness of  Rochelabeille,  making  great  brags  of 
that  success  as  an  infallible  approbation  of 
their  cause,  when  they  came  afterwards  to 


MONTAIGNE  221 

excuse  their  misfortunes  of  Moncontour  and 
Jarnac,  by  saying  they  were  fatherly  scourges 
and  corrections  that  they  had  not  a  people 
wholly  at  their  mercy,  they  make  it  mani- 
festly enough  appear,  what  it  is  to  take  two 
sorts  of  grist  out  of  the  same  sack,  and  with 
the  same  mouth  to  blow  hot  and  cold.  It  were 
better  to  possess  the  vulgar  with  the  solid  and 
real  foundations  of  truth.  'Twas  a  fine  naval 
battle  that  was  gained  under  the  command 
of  Don  John  of  Austria  a  few  months  since 
against  the  Turks;  but  it  has  also  pleased  God 
at  other  times  to  let  us  see  as  great  victories 
at  our  own  expense.  In  fine,  'tis  a  hard  mat- 
ter to  reduce  divine  things  to  our  balance, 
without  waste  and  losing  a  great  deal  of  the 
weight.  And  who  would  take  upon  him  to 
give  a  reason  that  Arius  and  his  Pope  Leo, 
the  principal  heads  of  the  Arian  heresy, 
should  die,  at  several  times,  of  so  like  and 
strange  deaths  (for  being  withdrawn  from 
the  disputation  by  a  griping  in  the  bowels, 
they  both  of  them  suddenly  gave  up  the  ghost 
upon  the  stool),  and  would  aggravate  this 
divine  vengeance  by  the  circumstances  of  the 
place,  might  as  well  add  the  death  of  Helio- 


222  MONTAIGNE 

gabalus,  who  was  also  slain  in  a  house  of 
office.  And,  indeed,  Irenaeus  was  involved  in 
the  same  fortune.  God,  being  pleased  to  show 
us,  that  the  good  have  something  else  to  hope 
for  and  the  wicked  something  else  to  fear, 
than  the  fortunes  or  misfortunes  of  this 
world,  manages  and  applies  these  according 
to  His  own  occult  will  and  pleasure,  and  de- 
prives us  of  the  means  foolishly  to  make 
thereof  our  own  profit.  And  those  people 
abuse  themselves  who  will  pretend  to  dive 
into  these  mysteries  by  the  strength  of  human 
reason.  They  never  give  one  hit  that  they 
do  not  receive  two  for  it;  of  which  St.  Augus- 
tine makes  out  a  great  proof  upon  his  ad- 
versaries. 'Tis  a  conflict  that  is  more  de- 
cided by  strength  of  memory  than  by  the 
force  of  reason.  We  are  to  content  ourselves 
with  the  light  it  pleases  the  sun  to  com- 
municate to  us,  by  virtue  of  his  rays;  and 
who  will  lift  up  his  eyes  to  take  in  a  greater, 
let  him  not  think  it  strange,  if  for  the  reward 
of  his  presumption,  he  there  lose  his  sight. 

"Who  of  men  can  know  the  counsel  of 
God?  or  who  can  think  what  the  will  of  the 
Lord  is?" 


MONTAIGNE  223 

TO  AVOID  PLEASURES  AT  THE 
EXPENSE  OF  LIFE. 

I  HAD  long  ago  observed  most  of  the 
opinions  of  the  ancients  to  concur  in  this, 
that  it  is  high  time  to  die  when  there  is  more 
ill  than  good  in  living,  and  that  to  preserve 
life  to  our  own  torment  and  inconvenience 
is  contrary  to  the  very  rales  of  nature,  as 
these  old  laws  instruct  us. 

''Either  tranquil  life,  or  happy  death.  It 
is  well  to  die  when  life  is  wearisome.  It  is 
better  to  die  than  to  live  miserable." 

But  to  push  this  contempt  of  death  so  far 
as  to  employ  it  to  the  removing  our  thoughts 
from  the  honors,  riches,  dignities,  and  other 
favors  and  goods,  as  we  call  them,  of  for- 
tune, as  if  reason  were  not  sufficient  to  per- 
suade us  to  avoid  them,  without  adding  this 
new  injunction,  I  had  never  seen  it  either 
commanded  or  practised,  till  this  passage  of 
Seneca  fell  into  my  hands;  who  advising 
Lucilius,  a  man  of  great  power  and  authority 
about  the  emperor,  to  alter  his  voluptuous 
and  magnificent  way  of  living,  and  to  retire 
himself  from  this  worldly  vanity  and  ambi- 


224  MONTAIGNE 

tion,  to  some  solitary,  quiet,  and  philosophi- 
cal life,  and  the  other  alleging  some  difficul- 
ties :  ' ■  I  am  of  opinion, '  '  says  he,  * l  either  that 
thon  leave  that  life  of  thine,  or  life  itself!  I 
wonld,  indeed,  advise  thee  to  the  gentle  way, 
and  to  untie,  rather  than  to  break,  the  knot 
thou  hast  indiscreetly  knit,  provided,  that  if 
it  be  not  otherwise  to  be  untied,  thou  reso- 
lutely break  it.  There  is  no  man  so  great  a 
coward,  that  had  not  rather  once  fall  than  to 
be  always  f ailing.' '  I  should  have  found 
this  counsel  conformable  enough  to  the 
Stoical  roughness:  but  it  appears  the  more 
strange,  for  being  borrowed  from  Epicurus, 
who  writes  the  same  thing  upon  the  like  oc- 
casion to  Idomeneus.  And  I  think  I  have 
observed  something  like  it,  but  with  Christian 
moderation,  amongst  our  own  people. 

St.  Hilary,  Bishop  of  Poictiers,  that  famous 
enemy  of  the  Arian  heresy,  being  in  Syria, 
had  intelligence  thither  sent  him,  that  Abra, 
his  only  daughter,  whom  he  left  at  home 
under  the  eye  and  tuition  of  her  mother,  was 
sought  in  marriage  by  the  greatest  noble- 
men of  the  country,  as  being  a  virgin  virtu- 
ously brought  up,  fair,  rich,  and  in  the  flower 


MONTAIGNE  225 

of  her  age;  whereupon  he  wrote  to  her  (as 
appears  upon  record),  that  she  should  re- 
move her  affection  from  all  the  pleasures  and 
advantages  proposed  to  her;  for  that  he  had 
in  his  travels  found  out  a  much  greater  and 
more  worthy  fortune  for  her,  a  husband  of 
much  greater  power  and  magnificence,  who 
would  present  her  with  robes  and  jewels  of 
inestimable  value;  wherein  his  design  was  to 
dispossess  her  of  the  appetite  and  use  of 
worldly  delights,  to  join  her  wholly  to  God; 
but  the  nearest  and  most  certain  way  to  this, 
being,  as  he  conceived,  the  death  of  his 
daughter;  he  never  ceased,  by  vows,  prayers, 
and  orisons,  to  beg  of  the  Almighty,  that  He 
would  please  to  call  her  out  of  this  world,  and 
to  take  her  to  Himself;  as  accordingly  it  came 
to  pass ;  for  soon  after  his  return,  she  died,  at 
which  he  expressed  a  singular  joy.  This 
seems  to  outdo  the  other,  forasmuch  as  he  ap- 
plies himself  to  this  means  at  the  outset, 
which  they  only  take  subsidiarily;  and,  be- 
sides, it  was  towards  his  only  daughter.  But 
I  will  not  omit  the  latter  end  of  this  story, 
though  it  be  for  my  purpose;  St.  Hilary's 
wife,  having  understood  from  him  how  the 


226  MONTAIGNE 

death  of  their  daughter  was  brought  about 
by  his  desire  and  design,  and  how  much  hap- 
pier she  was  to  be  removed  out  of  this  world 
than  to  have  stayed  in  it,  conceived  so  vivid 
an  apprehension  of  the  eternal  and  heavenly 
beatitude,  that  she  begged  of  her  husband, 
with  the  extremest  importunity,  to  do  as 
much  for  her;  and  God,  at  their  joint  request, 
shortly  after  calling  her  to  Him,  it  was  a 
death  embraced  with  singular  and  mutual 
content. 

FORTUNE  IS  OFTENTIMES  MET  WITH 
IN  THE  TRAIN  OF  REASON. 

THE  INCONSTANCY  and  various  motions 
of  fortune  may  reasonably  make  us  expect 
she  should  present  us  with  all  sorts  of  faces. 
Can  there  be  a  more  express  act  of  justice 
than  this?  The  Due  de  Valentinois,  having 
resolved  to  poison  Adrian,  Cardinal  of  Cor- 
neto,  with  whom  Pope  Alexander  VI.,  his 
father  and  himself,  were  to  sup  in  the  Vati- 
can, he  sent  before  a  bottle  of  poisoned  wine, 
and  withal,  strict  order  to  the  butler  to  keep 


MONTAIGNE  227 

it  very  safe.  The  Pope  being  come  before 
his  son,  and  calling  for  drink,  the  butler  sup- 
posing this  wine  had  not  been  so  strictly 
recommended  to  his  care,  but  only  upon  the 
account  of  its  excellency,  presented  it  forth- 
with to  the  Pope,  and  the  duke  himself  com- 
ing in  presently  after,  and  being  confident 
they  had  not  meddled  with  his  bottle,  took 
also  his  cup;  so  that  the  father  died  im- 
mediately upon  the  spot,  and  the  son,  after 
having  been  long  tormented  with  sickness, 
was  reserved  to  another  and  a  worse  fortune. 
Sometimes  she  seems  to  play  upon  us,  just 
in  the  nick  of  an  affair;  Monsieur  d'Estrees, 
at  that  time  ensign  to  Monsieur  de  Vendome, 
and  Monsieur  de  Licques,  lieutenant  in  the 
company  of  the  Due  d 'Ascot,  being  both  pre- 
tenders to  the  Sieur  de  Fougueselles'  sister, 
though  of  several  parties  (as  it  oft  falls  out 
amongst  frontier  neighbors),  the  Sieur  de 
Licques  carried  her;  but  on  the  same  day  he 
was  married,  and  which  was  worse,  before  he 
went  to  bed  to  his  wife,  the  bridegroom  hav- 
ing a  mind  to  break  a  lance  in  honor  of  his 
new  bride,  went  out  to  skirmish  near  St. 


228  MONTAIGNE 

Omer,  where  the  Sieur  d'Estrees  proving  the 
stronger,  took  him  prisoner,  and  the  more 
to  illustrate  his  victory,  the  lady  was  fain 

"Compelled  to  abstain  from  embracing  her 
new  spouse  in  her  arms  before  two  winters 
pass  in  succession,  during  their  long  nights 
had  satiated  her  eager  love," 

— to  request  him  of  courtesy,  to  deliver  up  his 
prisoner  to  her,  as  he  accordingly  did,  the 
gentlemen  of  France  never  denying  anything 
to  ladies. 

Does  she  not  seem  to  be  an  artist  here! 
Constantine,  son  of  Helena,  founded  the  em- 
pire of  Constantinople,  and  so  many  ages 
after,  Constantine,  the  son  of  Helen,  put  an 
end  to  it.  Sometimes  she  is  pleased  to  emulate 
our  miracles:  we  are  told,  that  King  Clovis 
besieging  Angouleme,  the  walls  fell  down  of 
themselves  by  divine  favor!  and  Bouchet  has 
it  from  some  author,  that  King  Robert  having 
sat  down  before  a  city,  and  being  stolen  away 
from  the  siege  to  go  keep  the  feast  of  St. 
Aignan  at  Orleans,  as  he  was  in  devotion  at 
a  certain  part  of  the  Mass,  the  walls  of  the 
beleaguered  city,  without  any  manner  of  vio- 


MONTAIGNE  229 

lence,  fell  down  with  a  sudden  ruin.  But  she 
did  quite  contrary  in  our  Milan  wars;  for, 
le  Capitaine  Rense  laying  siege  for  us  to  the 
city  Arona,  and  having  carried  a  mine  under 
a  great  part  of  the  wall,  the  mine  being 
sprung,  the  wall  was  lifted  from  its  base,  but 
dropped  down  again  nevertheless,  whole  and 
entire,  and  so  exactly  upon  its  foundation, 
that  the  besieged  suffered  no  inconvenience 
by  that  attempt. 

Sometimes  she  plays  the  physician.  Jason 
of  Pheres  being  given  over  by  the  physicians, 
by  reason  of  an  imposthume  in  his  breast, 
having  a  mind  to  rid  himself  of  his  pain,  by 
death  at  least,  threw  himself  in  a  battle 
desperately  into  the  thickest  of  the  enemy, 
where  he  was  so  fortunately  wounded  quite 
through  the  body,  that  the  imposthume  broke, 
and  he  was  perfectly  cured.  Did  she  not  also 
excel  the  painter  Protogenes  in  his  art!  who 
having  finished  the  picture  of  a  dog  quite 
tired  and  out  of  breath,  in  all  the  other  parts 
excellently  well  to  his  own  liking,  but  not  be- 
ing able  to  express,  as  he  would,  the  slaver 
and  foam  that  should  come  out  of  its  mouth, 
vexed  and  angry  at  his  work,  he  took  his 


230  MONTAIGNE 

sponge,  which  by  cleaning  his  pencils  had 
imbibed  several  sorts  of  colors,  and  threw 
it  in  a  rage  against  the  picture,  with  an  in- 
tent utterly  to  deface  it;  when  fortune  guid- 
ing the  sponge  to  hit  just  upon  the  mouth  of 
the  dog,  it  there  performed  what  all  his  art 
was  not  able  to  do.  Does  she  not  sometimes 
direct  our  counsels  and  correct  them?  Isabel, 
Queen  of  England,  having  to  sail  from 
Zeeland  into  her  own  kingdom,  with  an  army, 
in  favor  of  her  son  against  her  husband, 
had  been  lost,  had  she  come  into  the  port 
she  intended,  being  there  laid  wait  for  by  the 
enemy;  but  fortune,  against  her  will,  threw 
her  into  another  haven,  where  she  landed  in 
safety.  And  that  man  of  old  who,  throwing 
a  stone  at  a  dog,  hit  and  killed  his  mother- 
in-law,  had  he  not  reason  to  pronounce  this 
verse: — 

" Fortune  has  more  judgment  than  we." 

Fortune  is  better  advised  than  us.  Icetes  had 
contracted  with  two  soldiers  to  kill  Timoleon 
at  Adrana  in  Sicily.  They  took  their  time  to 
do  it  when  he  was  assisting  at  a  sacrifice,  and 
thrusting  into  the  crowd,  as  they  were  mak- 


MONTAIGNE  231 

ing  signs  to  one  another,  that  now  was  a  fit 
time  to  do  their  business,  in  steps  a  third, 
who,  with  a  stroke  of  a  sword,  lays  him  dead 
upon  the  place  and  runs  away.  The  com- 
panion, concluding  himself  discovered  and 
lost,  runs  to  the  altar  and  begs  for  mercy, 
promising  to  discover  the  whole  truth,  which 
as  he  was  doing,  and  laying  open  the  full  con- 
spiracy, behold  the  third  man,  who  being  ap- 
prehended, was,  as  a  murderer,  thrust  and 
hauled  by  the  people  through  the  press, 
towards  Timoleon,  and  the  other  most  emi- 
nent persons  of  the  assembly,  before  whom 
being  brought,  he  cries  out  for  pardon,  plead- 
ing that  he  had  justly  slain  his  father's  mur- 
derer; which  he,  also,  proving  upon  the  spot, 
by  sufficient  witnesses,  whom  his  good  for- 
tune very  opportunely  supplied  him  withal, 
that  his  father  was  really  killed  in  the  city  of 
Leontini,  by  that  very  man  on  whom  he  had 
taken  his  revenge,  he  was  presently  awarded 
ten  Attic  minae,  for  having  had  the  good 
fortune,  by  designing  to  revenge  the  death 
of  his  father,  to  preserve  the  life  of  the  com- 
mon father  of  Sicily.  Fortune,  truly,  in  her 
conduct  surpasses  all  the  rules  of  human 
prudence. 


232  MONTAIGNE 

But  to  conclude:  is  there  not  a  direct  ap- 
plication of  her  favor,  bounty,  and  piety 
manifestly  discovered  in  this  action?  Igna- 
tius the  father  and  Ignatius  the  son  being 
proscribed  by  the  triumvirs  of  Rome,  re- 
solved upon  this  generous  act  of  mutual  kind- 
ness, to  fall  by  the  hands  of  one  another, 
and  by  that  means  to  frustrate  and  defeat  the 
cruelty  of  the  tyrants;  and  accordingly  with 
their  swords  drawn,  ran  full  drive  upon  one 
another,  where  fortune  so  guided  the  points, 
that  they  made  two  equally  mortal  wounds, 
affording  withal  so  much  honor  to  so 
brave  a  friendship,  as  to  leave  them 
just  strength  enough  to  draw  out  their 
bloody  swords,  that  they  might  have 
liberty  to  embrace  one  another  in  this  dying 
condition,  with  so  close  and  hearty  an  em- 
brace, that  the  executioner  cut  off  both  their 
heads  at  once,  leaving  the  bodies  still  fast 
linked  together  in  this  noble  bond,  and  their 
wounds  joined  mouth  to  mouth,  affectionately 
sucking  in  the  last  blood  and  remainder  of 
the  lives  of  each  other. 


MONTAIGNE  233 

OF  A  DEFECT  IN  OUR  GOVERNMENT 

MY  LATE  father,  a  man  that  had  no  other 
advantages  than  experience  and  his  own 
natural  parts,  was  nevertheless  of  a  very  clear 
judgment,  formerly  told  me  that  he  once  had 
thoughts  of  endeavoring  to  introduce  this 
practice;  that  there  might  be  in  every  city  a 
certain  place  assigned  to  which  such  as  stood 
in  need  of  anything  might  repair,  and  have 
their  business  entered  by  an  officer  appointed 
for  that  purpose.  As  for  example:  I  want  a 
chapman  to  buy  my  pearls;  I  want  one  that 
has  pearls  to  sell;  such  a  one  wants  company 
to  go  to  Paris;  such  a  one  seeks  a  servant  of 
such  a  quality;  such  a  one  a  master;  such  a 
one  such  an  artificer;  some  inquiring  for  one 
thing,  some  for  another,  every  one  according 
to  what  he  wants.  And  doubtless,  these 
mutual  advertisements  would  be  of  no  con- 
temptible advantage  to  the  public  corre- 
spondence and  intelligence:  for  there  are 
evermore  conditions  that  hunt  after  one 
another,  and  for  want  of  knowing  one 
another's  occasions  leave  men  in  very  great 
necessity. 


234  MONTAIGNE 

I  have  heard,  to  the  great  shame  of  the  age 
we  live  in,  that  in  onr  very  sight  two  most 
excellent  men  for  learning  died  so  poor  that 
they  had  scarce  bread  to  put  in  their  mouths : 
Lilius  Gregorius  Giraldus  in  Italy  and  Sebas- 
tianus  Castalio  in  Germany:  and  I  believe 
there  are  a  thousand  men  would  have  invited 
them  into  their  families,  with  very  advan- 
tageous conditions,  or  have  relieved  them 
where  they  were,  had  they  known  their  wants. 
The  world  is  not  so  generally  corrupted,  but 
that  I  know  a  man  that  would  heartily  wish 
the  estate  his  ancestors  have  left  him  might 
be  employed,  so  long  as  it  shall  please  for- 
tune to  give  him  leave  to  enjoy  it,  to  secure 
rare  and  remarkable  persons  of  any  kind, 
whom  misfortune  sometimes  persecutes  to  the 
last  degree,  from  the  dangers  of  necessity; 
and  at  least  place  them  in  such  a  condition 
that  they  must  be  very  hard  to  please,  if  they 
are  not  contented. 

My  father  in  his  domestic  economy  had  this 
rule  (which  I  know  how  to  commend,  but 
by  no  means  to  imitate),  namely,  that  besides 
the  day-book  or  memorial  of  household  af- 
fairs, where  the  small    accounts,   payments, 


MONTAIGNE  235 

and  disbursements,  which  do  not  require  a 
secretary's  hand,  were  entered,  and  which  a 
steward  always  had  in  custody,  he  ordered 
him  whom  he  employed  to  write  for  him,  to 
keep  a  journal,  and  in  it  to  set  down  all  the  re- 
markable occurrences,  and  daily  memorials  of 
the  history  of  his  house:  very  pleasant  to  look 
over,  when  time  begins  to  wear  things  out  of 
memory,  and  very  useful  sometimes  to  put  us 
out  of  doubt  when  such  a  thing  was  begun, 
when  ended;  what  visitors  came,  and  when 
they  went;  our  travels,  absences,  marriages, 
and  deaths;  the  reception  of  good  or  ill  news; 
the  change  of  principal  servants,  and  the  like. 
An  ancient  custom,  which  I  think  it  would 
not  be  amiss  for  every  one  to  revive  in  his 
own  house;  and  I  find  I  did  very  foolishly  in 
neglecting  it. 

OF  THE  CUSTOM  OF  CLOTHING 
ONESELF. 

WHATEVER  I  shall  say  upon  this  subject, 
I  am  of  necessity  to  invade  some  of  the 
bounds  of  custom,  so  careful  has  she  been  to 
shut  up  all  the  avenues.  I  was  disputing  with 
myself  in  this  shivering  season,  whether  the 


236  MONTAIGNE 

fashion  of  going  naked  in  those  nations  lately 
discovered  is  imposed  upon  them  by  the  hot 
temperature  of  the  air,  as  we  say  of  the 
Indians  and  Moors,  or  whether  it  be  the 
original  fashion  of  mankind.  Men  of  under- 
standing, forasmuch  as  all  things  under  the 
sun,  as  the  Holy  Writ  declares,  are  subject 
to  the  same  laws,  were  wont  in  such  consid- 
erations as  these,  where  we  are  to  distinguish 
the  natural  laws  from  those  which  have  been 
imposed  by  man's  invention,  to  have  recourse 
to  the  general  polity  of  the  world,  where  there 
can  be  nothing  counterfeit.  Now,  all  else- 
where being  exactly  furnished  with  needle 
and  thread  for  the  support  of  existence,  it  is 
incredible  that  we  only  are  brought  into  the 
world  in  a  defective  and  indigent  condition, 
and  in  such  a  state  as  cannot  subsist  without 
external  aid.  Therefore  it  is  that  I  believe, 
that  as  plants,  trees,  and  animals,  and  all 
things  that  have  life,  are  seen  to  be  by  nature 
sufficiently  clothed  and  covered,  to  defend 
them  from  the  injuries  of  weather: — 

"And  that  for  this  reason  nearly  all  things 
are  clothed  with  skin,  or  hair,  or  shells,  or 
bark,  or  some  such  thing." 


MONTAIGNE  237 

bo  were  we:  but  as  those  who  by  artificial 
light  put  out  that  of  the  day,  so  we  by  bor- 
rowed forms  and  fashions  have  destroyed  our 
own.  And  'tis  plain  enough  to  be  seen,  that 
'tis  custom  only  which  renders  that  impos- 
sible that  otherwise  is  nothing  so ;  for  of  those 
nations  who  have  no  manner  of  knowledge  of 
clothing,  some  are  situated  under  the  same 
temperature  that  we  are,  and  some  in  much 
colder  climates.  And  besides,  our  most  ten- 
der parts  are  always  exposed  to  the  air,  as 
the  eyes,  mouth,  nose,  and  ears;  and  our 
country  laborers,  like  our  ancestors  in  for- 
mer times,  go  with  their  breasts  and  bellies 
open.  Had  we  been  born  with  a  necessity 
upon  us  of  wearing  petticoats  and  breeches, 
there  is  no  doubt  but  nature  would  have  for- 
tified those  parts  she  intended  should  be  ex- 
posed to  the  fury  of  the  seasons  with  a 
thicker  skin,  as  she  has  done  the  finger-ends 
and  the  soles  of  the  feet.  And  why  should 
this  seem  hard  to  believe?  I  observe  much 
greater  distance  betwixt  my  habit  and  that 
of  one  of  our  country  boors,  than  betwixt 
his  and  that  of  a  man  who  has  no  other  cov- 
ering but  his  skin.  How  many  men,  especially 


238  MONTAIGNE 

in  Turkey,  go  naked  upon  the  account  of  de- 
votion? Some  one  asked  a  beggar,  whom  he 
saw  in  his  shirt  in  the  depth  of  winter,  as 
brisk  and  frolic  as  he  who  goes  muffled  up 
to  the  ears  in  furs,  how  he  was  able  to  endure 
to  go  so !  M  Why,  sir, ' '  he  answered, ' '  you  go 
with  your  face  bare:  I  am  all  face."  The 
Italians  have  a  story  of  the  Duke  of  Flor- 
ence's fool,  whom  his  master  asking  how,  be- 
ing so  thinly  clad,  he  was  able  to  support  the 
cold,  when  he  himself,  warmly  wrapped  up 
as  he  was,  was  hardly  able  to  do  it !  "  Why, ' ' 
replied  the  fool,  "use  my  receipt  to  put  on 
all  your  clothes  you  have  at  once,  and  you'll 
feel  no  more  cold  than  I."  King  Massinissa, 
to  an  extreme  old  age,  could  never  be  pre- 
vailed upon  to  go  with  his  head  covered,  how 
cold,  stormy,  or  rainy  soever  the  weather 
might  be;  which  also  is  reported  of  the  Em- 
peror Severus.  Herodotus  tells  us,  that  in 
the  battles  fought  betwixt  the  Egyptians  and 
the  Persians,  it  was  observed  both  by  him- 
self and  by  others,  that  of  those  who  were 
left  dead  upon  the  field,  the  heads  of  the 
Egyptians  were  without  comparison  harder 
than  those  of  the  Persians,  by  reason  that  the 


MONTAIGNE  239 

last  had  gone  with  their  heads  always  cov- 
ered from  their  infancy,  first  with  biggins, 
and  then  with  turbans,  and  the  others  always 
shaved  and  bare.  King  Agesilaus  continued 
to  a  decrepit  age  to  wear  always  the  same 
clothes  in  winter  that  he  did  in  summer. 
Caesar,  says  Suetonius,  marched  always  at 
the  head  of  his  army,  for  the  most  part  on 
foot,  with  his  head  bare,  whether  it  was  rain 
or  sunshine,  and  as  much  is  said  of  Hanni- 
bal:— 

"  Bareheaded  he  marched  in  snow,  exposed 
to  pouring  rain  and  the  utmost  rigor  of  the 
weather.' ' 

A  Venetian  who  has  long  lived  in  Pegu,  and 
has  lately  returned  thence,  writes  that  the 
men  and  women  of  that  kingdom,  though  they 
cover  all  their  other  parts,  go  always  bare- 
foot and  ride  so  too ;  and  Plato  very  earnestly 
advises  for  the  health  of  the  whole  body,  to 
give  the  head  and  the  feet  no  other  clothing 
than  what  nature  has  bestowed.  He  whom 
the  Poles  have  elected  for  their  king,  since 
ours  came  thence,  who  is,  indeed,  one  of  the 
greatest  princes  of  this  age,  never  wears  any 


240  MONTAIGNE 

gloves,  and  in  winter  or  whatever  weather 
can  come,  never  wears  other  cap  abroad  than 
that  he  wears  at  home.  "Whereas  I  cannot 
endure  to  go  unbuttoned  or  untied;  my  neigh- 
boring laborers  would  think  themselves  in 
chains,  if  they  were  so  braced.  Varro  is  of 
opinion,  that  when  it  was  ordained  we  should 
be  bare  in  the  presence  of  the  gods  and  be- 
fore the  magistrate,  it  was  so  ordered  rather 
upon  the  score  of  health,  and  to  inure  us  to 
the  injuries  of  weather,  than  upon  the  account 
of  reverence;  and  since  we  are  now  talking  of 
cold,  and  Frenchmen  used  to  wear  variety  of 
colors  (not  I  myself,  for  I  seldom  wear  other 
than  black  or  white,  in  imitation  of  my 
father),  let  us  add  another  story  out  of  Le 
Capitaine  Martin  du  Bellay,  who  affirms,  that 
in  the  march  to  Luxembourg  he  saw  so  great 
frost,  that  the  munition-wine  was  cut  with 
hatchets  and  wedges,  and  delivered  out  to  the 
soldiers  by  weight,  and  that  they  carried  it 
away  in  baskets:  and  Ovid: — 

1  *  The  wine  when  out  of  the  cask  retains  the 
form  of  the  cask ;  and  is  given  out  not  in  cups, 
but  in  bits. ' ' 


MONTAIGNE  241 

At  the  mouth  of  Lake  Maeotis  the  frosts  are 
so  very  sharp,  that  in  the  very  same  place 
where  Mithridates'  lieutenant  had  fought  the 
enemy  dry-foot  and  given  them  a  notable  de- 
feat, the  summer  following  he  obtained  over 
them  a  naval  victory.  The  Romans  fought 
at  a  very  great  disadvantage,  in  the  engage- 
ment they  had  with  the  Carthaginians  near 
Piacenza,  by  reason  that  they  went  to  the 
charge  with  their  blood  congealed  and  their 
limbs  numbed  with  cold,  whereas  Hannibal 
had  caused  great  fires  to  be  dispersed  quite 
through  his  camp  to  warm  his  soldiers,  and 
oil  to  be  distributed  amongst  them,  to  the  end 
that  anointing  themselves,  they  might  render 
their  nerves  more  supple  and  active,  and 
fortify  the  pores  against  the  violence  of  the 
air  and  freezing  wind,  which  raged  in  that 
season. 

The  retreat  the  Greeks  made  from  Baby- 
lon into  their  own  country  is  famous  for  the 
difficulties  and  calamities  they  had  to  over- 
come; of  which  this  was  one,  that  being  en- 
countered in  the  mountains  of  Armenia  with 
a  horrible  storm  of  snow,  they  lost  all  knowl- 


242  MONTAIGNE 

edge  of  the  country  and  of  the  ways,  and 
being  driven  up,  were  a  day  and  a  night  with- 
out eating  or  drinking;  most  of  their  cattle 
died,  many  of  themselves  were  starved  to 
death,  several  struck  blind  with  the  force 
of  the  hail  and  the  glare  of  the  snow,  many  of 
them  maimed  in  their  fingers  and  toes,  and 
many  stiff  and  motionless  with  the  extremity 
of  the  cold,  who  had  yet  their  understanding 
entire. 

Alexander  saw  a  nation,  where  they  bury 
their  fruit-trees  in  winter  to  protect  them 
from  being  destroyed  by  the  frost,  and  we 
also  may  see  the  same. 

But,  so  far  as  clothes  go,  the  King  of 
Mexico  changed  four  times  a  day  his  apparel, 
and  never  put  it  on  again,  employing  that 
he  left  off  in  his  continual  liberalities  and 
rewards;  and  neither  pot,  dish,  nor  other 
utensil  of  his  kitchen  or  table  was  ever  served 
twice. 


MONTAIGNE  243 


OF  CATO  THE  YOUNGER 

I  AM  not  guilty  of  the  common  error  of 
judging  another  by  myself.  I  easily  believe 
that  in  another's  humor  which  is  contrary 
to  my  own;  and  though  I  find  myself  en- 
gaged to  one  certain  form,  I  do  not  oblige 
others  to  it,  as  many  do;  but  believe  and  ap- 
prehend a  thousand  ways  of  living;  and,  con- 
trary to  most  men,  more  easily  admit  of  dif- 
ference than  uniformity  amongst  us.  I  as 
frankly  as  any  one  would  have  me,  discharge 
a  man  from  my  humors  and  principles,  and 
consider  him  according  to  his  own  particular 
model.  Though  I  am  not  continent  myself, 
I  nevertheless  sincerely  approve  the  contin- 
ence of  the  Feuillans  and  Capuchins,  and 
highly  commend  their  way  of  living.  I  in- 
sinuate myself  by  imagination  into  their 
places,  and  love  and  honor  them  the  more 
for  being  other  than  I  am.  I  very  much  de- 
sire that  we  may  be  judged  every  man  by 
himself,  and  would  not  be  drawn  into  the 
consequence  of  common  examples.  My  own 
weakness  nothing  alters  the  esteem  I  ought 


244  MONTAIGNE 

to  have  for  the  force  and  vigor  of  those  who 
deserve  it: — 

1 '  There  are  who  persuade  nothing  but  what 
they  believe  they  can  imitate  themselves.,, 

Crawling  upon  the  slime  of  the  earth,  I  do 
not  for  all  that  cease  to  observe  up  in  the 
clouds  the  inimitable  height  of  some  heroic 
souls.  'Tis  a  great  deal  for  me  to  have  my 
judgment  regular  and  just,  if  the  effects  can- 
not be  so,  and  to  maintain  this  sovereign  part, 
at  least,  free  from  corruption:  'tis  something 
to  have  my  will  right  and  good  where  my  legs 
fail  me.  This  age  wherein  we  live,  in  our 
part  of  the  world  at  least,  is  grown  so  stupid, 
that  not  only  the  exercise,  but  the  very  imagi- 
nation of  virtue  is  defective,  and  seems  to  be 
no  other  but  college  jargon: — 

"They  think  words  virtue,  as  they  think 
timber  a  sacred  grove.' ' 

"Which  they  ought  to  reverence,  though 
they  cannot  comprehend." 

'Tis  a  gewgaw  to  hang  in  a  cabinet  or  at  the 
end  of  the  tongue,  as  on  the  tip  of  the  ear,  for 


MONTAIGNE  245 

ornament  only.  There  are  no  longer  virtnoua 
actions  extant;  those  actions  that  carry  a 
show  of  virtue  have  yet  nothing  of  its  es- 
sence; by  reason  that  profit,  glory,  fear,  cus- 
tom, and  other  suchlike  foreign  causes,  put 
us  on  the  way  to  produce  them.  Our  justice 
also,  valor,  courtesy,  may  be  called  so  too, 
in  respect  to  others  and  according  to  the  face 
they  appear  with  to  the  public;  but  in  the 
doer  it  can  by  no  means  be  virtue,  because 
there  is  another  end  proposed,  another  mov- 
ing cause.  Now  virtue  owns  nothing  to  be 
hers,  but  what  is  done  by  herself  and  for 
herself  alone. 

In  that  great  battle  of  Plataea,  that  the 
Greeks  under  the  command  of  Pausanias 
gained  against  Mardonius  and  the  Persians, 
the  conquerors,  according  to  their  custom, 
coming  to  divide  amongst  them  the  glory  of 
the  exploit,  attributed  to  the  Spartan  nation 
the  pre-eminence  of  valor  in  the  engagement. 
The  Spartans,  great  judges  of  virtue,  when 
they  came  to  determine  to  what  particular 
man  of  their  nation  the  honor  was  due  of 
having  the  best  behaved  himself  upon  this 
occasion,  found  that  Aristodemus  had  of  all 


246  MONTAIGNE 

others  hazarded  his  person  with  the  greatest 
bravery;  but  did  not,  however,  allow  him 
any  prize,  by  reason  that  his  virtue  had  been 
incited  by  a  desire  to  clear  his  reputation 
from  the  reproach  of  his  miscarriage  at  the 
business  of  Thermopylae,  and  to  die  bravely 
to  wipe  off  that  former  blemish. 

Our  judgments  are  yet  sick,  and  obey  the 
humor  of  our  depraved  manners.  I  observe 
most  of  the  wits  of  these  times  pretend  to 
ingenuity,  by  endeavoring  to  blemish  and 
darken  the  glory  of  the  bravest  and  most  gen- 
erous actions  of  former  ages,  putting  one  vile 
interpretation  or  another  upon  them,  and 
forging  and  supposing  vain  causes  and 
motives  for  the  noble  things  they  did:  a 
mighty  subtlety  indeed !  Give  me  the  greatest 
and  most  unblemished  action  that  ever  the 
day  beheld,  and  I  will  contrive  a  hundred 
plausible  drifts  and  ends  to  obscure  it.  God 
knows,  whoever  will  stretch  them  out  to  the 
full,  what  diversity  of  images  our  internal 
wills  suffer  under.  They  do  not  so  malici- 
ously play  the  censurers,  as  they  do  it  ignor- 
antly  and  rudely  in  all  their  detractions. 

The  same  pains  and  license  that  others  take 


MONTAIGNE  247 

to  blemish  and  bespatter  these  illustrious 
names,  I  would  willingly  undergo  to  lend 
them  a  shoulder  to  raise  them  higher.  These 
rare  forms,  that  are  culled  out  by  the  consent 
of  the  wisest  men  of  all  ages,  for  the  world 's 
example,  I  should  not  stick  to  augment  in 
honor,  as  far  as  my  invention  would  permit, 
in  all  the  circumstances  of  favorable  inter- 
pretation; and  we  may  well  believe  that  the 
force  of  our  invention  is  infinitely  short  of 
their  merit.  'Tis  the  duty  of  good  men  to 
portray  virtue  as  beautiful  as  they  can,  and 
there  would  be  nothing  wrong  should  our 
passion  a  little  transport  us  in  favor  of  so 
sacred  a  form.  What  these  people  do,  on  the 
contrary,  they  either  do  out  of  malice,  or  by 
the  vice  of  confining  their  belief  to  their  own 
capacity;  or,  which  I  am  more  inclined  to 
think,  for  not  having  their  sight  strong,  clear, 
and  elevated  enough  to  conceive  the  splen- 
dor of  virtue  in  her  native  purity:  as 
Plutarch  complains,  that  in  his  time  some  at- 
tributed the  cause  of  the  younger  Cato's 
death  to  his  fear  of  Caesar,  at  which  he  seems 
very  angry,  and  with  good  reason;  and  by  this 
a  man  may  guess  how  much  more  he  would 


248  MONTAIGNE 

have  been  offended  with  those  who  have  at- 
tributed it  to  ambition.  Senseless  people!  He 
would  rather  have  performed  a  noble,  just, 
and  generous  action,  and  to  have  had 
ignominy  for  his  reward,  than  for  glory. 
That  man  was  in  truth  a  pattern  that  nature 
chose  out  to  show  to  what  height  human 
virtue  and  constancy  could  arrive. 

But  I  am  not  capable  of  handling  so  rich 
an  argument,  and  shall  therefore  only  set 
five  Latin  poets  together,  contending  in  the 
praise  of  Cato;  and,  incidentally,  for  their 
own  too.  Now,  a  well-educated  child  will 
judge  the  two  first,  in  comparison  of  the 
others,  a  little  flat  and  languid;  the  third 
more  vigorous,  but  overthrown  by  the  ex- 
travagance of  his  own  force;  he  will  then 
think  that  there  will  be  room  for  one  or  two 
gradations  of  invention  to  come  to  the 
fourth,  and,  mounting  to  the  pitch  of  that, 
he  will  lift  up  his  hands  in  admiration;  com- 
ing to  the  last,  the  first  by  some  space  (but 
a  space  that  he  will  swear  is  not  to  be  filled 
up  by  any  human  wit),  he  will  be  astounded, 
he  will  not  know  where  he  is. 

And  here  is  a  wonder:  we  have  far  more 


MONTAIGNE  249 

poets  than  judges  and  interpreters  of  poetry ; 
it  is  easier  to  write  it  than  to  understand  it. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  certain  low  and  moderate 
sort  of  poetry,  that  a  man  may  well  enough 
judge  by  certain  rules  of  art;  but  the  true, 
supreme,  and  divine  poesy  is  above  all  rules 
and  reason.  And  whoever  discerns  the  beauty 
of  it  with  the  most  assured  and  most  steady 
sight,  sees  no  more  than  the  quick  reflection 
of  a  flash  of  lightning:  it  does  not  exercise, 
but  ravishes  and  overwhelms  our  judgment. 
The  fury  that  possesses  him  who  is  able  to 
penetrate  into  it  wounds  yet  a  third  man  by 
hearing  him  repeat  it;  like  a  loadstone  that 
not  only  attracts  the  needle,  but  also  infuses 
into  it  the  virtue  to  attract  others.  And  it 
is  more  evidently  manifest  in  our  theatres, 
that  the  sacred  inspiration  of  the  Muses,  hav- 
ing first  stirred  up  the  poet  to  anger,  sorrow, 
hatred,  and  out  of  himself,  to  whatever  they 
will,  does  moreover  by  the  poet  possess  the 
actor,  and  by  the  actor  consecutively  all  the 
spectators.  So  much  do  our  passions  hang 
and  depend  upon  one  another. 

Poetry  has  ever  had  that  power  over  me 
from  a  child  to  transpierce  and  transport  me; 


250  MONTAIGNE 

but  this  vivid  sentiment  that  is  natural  to  me 
has  been  variously  handled  by  variety  of 
forms,  not  so  much  higher  or  lower  (for  they 
were  ever  the  highest  of  every  kind),  as  dif- 
fering in  color.  First,  a  gay  and  sprightly 
fluency;  afterwards,  a  lofty  and  penetrating 
subtlety;  and  lastly,  a  mature  and  constant 
vigor.  Their  names  will  better  express 
them:  Ovid,  Lucan,  Virgil. 
But  our  folks  are  beginning  their  career: — 

"Let  Cato,  whilst  he  live,  be  greater  than 
Caesar," 

says  one: — 

"And  Cato  invincible,  death   being  over- 
come," 

says  the  second.    And  the  third,  speaking  of 
the  civil  wars  betwixt  Caesar  and  Pompey: — 

* '  The  victorious  cause  blessed  the  gods,  the 
defeated  one  Cato. ' ' 

And  the  fourth,  upon  the  praises  of  Caesar: — 

"And  conquered  all  but  the  indomitable 
mind  of  Cato." 


MONTAIGNE  251 


And  the  master  of  the  choir,  after  having  set 
forth  all  the  great  names  of  the  greatest 
Romans,  ends  thns: — 

"Cato  giving  laws  to  all  the  rest." 


HOW  WE  CRY  AND  LAUGH  FOR  THE 
SAME  THING. 

WHEN  WE  read  in  history  that  Antigonns 
was  very  mnch  displeased  with  his  son  for 
presenting  him  the  head  of  King  Pyrrhus  his 
enemy,  but  newly  slain  fighting  against  him, 
and  that  seeing  it,  he  wept;  and  that  Rene, 
Dnke  of  Lorraine,  also  lamented  the  death 
of  Charles,  Duke  of  Burgundy,  whom  he  had 
himself  defeated,  and  appeared  in  mourning 
at  his  funeral;  and  that  in  the  battle  of 
D'Auray  (which  Count  Montfort  obtained 
over  Charles  de  Blois,  his  competitor  for  the 
duchy  of  Brittany),  the  conqueror  meeting 
the  dead  body  of  his  enemy,  was  very  much 
afflicted  at  his  death,  we  must  not  presently 
cry  out: — 

"And  thus  it  happens  that  the  mind  of  each 


252  MONTAIGNE 

veils  its  passion  under  a  different  appear- 
ance, sad  beneath  a  smiling  visage,  gay  be- 
neath a  sombre  air." 

When  Pompey's  head  was  presented  to 
Caesar,  the  histories  tell  us  that  he  turned 
away  his  face,  as  from  a  sad  and  unpleasing 
object.  There  had  been  so  long  an  intelli- 
gence and  society  betwixt  them  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  public  affairs,  so  great  a  com- 
munity of  fortunes,  so  many  mutual  offices, 
and  so  near  an  alliance,  that  this  countenance 
of  his  ought  not  to  suffer  under  any  misin- 
terpretation, or  to  be  suspected  for  either 
false  or  counterfeit,  as  this  other  seems  to 
believe: — 

"And  now  he  thought  it  safe  to  play  the 
kind  father-in-law,  shedding  forced  tears,  and 
from  a  joyful  breast  discharging  sighs  and 
groans ;" 

for  though  it  be  true  that  the  greatest  part 
of  our  actions  are  no  other  than  visor  and 
disguise,  and  that  it  may  sometimes  be  true 
that — 

"The  heir's  tears  behind  the  mask  are 
smiles," 


MONTAIGNE  253 

yet,  in  judging  of  these  accidents,  we  are  to 
consider  how  much  onr  souls  are  oftentimes 
agitated  with  divers  passions.  And  as  they 
say  that  in  our  bodies  there  is  a  congrega- 
tion" of  divers  humors,  of  which  that  is  the 
sovereign  which,  according  to  the  complex- 
ion we  are  of,  is  commonly  most  predominant 
in  us:  so,  though  the  soul  have  in  it  divers 
motions  to  give  it  agitation,  yet  must  there 
of  necessity  be  one  to  overrule  all  the  rest, 
though  not  with  so  necessary  and  absolute  a 
dominion  but  that  through  the  flexibility  and 
inconstancy  of  the  soul,  those  of  less  au- 
thority may  upon  occasion  reassume  their 
place  and  make  a  little  sally  in  turn.  Thence 
it  is,  that  we  see  not  only  children,  who  in- 
nocently obey  and  follow  nature,  often  laugh 
and  cry  at  the  same  thing,  but  not  one  of  us 
can  boast,  what  journey  soever  he  may  have 
in  hand  that  he  has  the  most  set  his  heart 
upon,  but  when  he  comes  to  part  with  his 
family  and  friends,  he  will  find  something 
that  troubles  him  within;  and  though  he  re- 
frain his  tears  yet  he  puts  foot  in  the  stirrup 
with  a  sad  and  cloudy  countenance.  And 
what  gentle  flame  soever  may  warm  the  heart 


254  MONTAIGNE 

of  modest  and  well-born  virgins,  yet  are  they 
fain  to  be  forced  from  about  their  mothers' 
necks  to  be  put  to  bed  to  their  husbands, 
whatever  this  boon  companion  is  pleased  to 
say: — 

"Is  Venus  really  so  repugnant  to  newly- 
married  maids?  Do  they  meet  the  smiles  of 
parents  with  feigned  tears?  They  weep 
copiously  within  the  very  threshold  of  the 
nuptial  chamber.  No,  so  the  gods  help  me, 
they  do  not  truly  grieve." 

Neither  is  it  strange  to  lament  a  person  dead 
whom  a  man  would  by  no  means  should  be 
alive.  When  I  rattle  my  man,  I  do  it  with  all 
the  mettle  I  have,  and  load  him  with  no 
feigned,  but  down  right  real  curses;  but  the 
heat  being  over,  if  he  should  stand  in  need  of 
me,  I  should  be  very  ready  to  do  him  good: 
for  I  instantly  turn  the  leaf.  When  I  call 
him  calf  and  coxcomb,  I  do  not  pretend  to 
entail  those  titles  upon  him  for  ever;  neither 
do  I  think  I  give  myself  the  lie  in  calling  him 
an  honest  fellow  presently  after.  No  one 
quality  engrosses  us  purely  and  universally. 
Were  it  not  the  sign  of  a  fool  to  talk  to  one's 


MONTAIGNE  255 

self,  there  would  hardly  be  a  day  or  hour 
wherein  I  might  not  be  heard  to  grumble  and 
mutter  to  myself  and  against  myself,  "Con- 
found the  fool!"  and  yet  I  do  not  think  that 
to  be  my  definition.  Who  for  seeing  me  one 
while  cold  and  presently  very  fond  towards 
my  wife,  believes  the  one  or  the  other  to  be 
counterfeited,  is  an  ass.  Nero,  taking  leave 
of  his  mother  whom  he  was  sending  to  be 
drowned,  was  nevertheless  sensible  of  some 
emotion  at  this  farewell,  and  was  struck  with 
horror  and  pity.  'Tis  said,  that  the  light  of 
the  sun  is  not  one  continuous  thing,  but  that 
he  darts  new  rays  so  thick  one  upon  another 
that  we  cannot  perceive  the  intermission: — 

i 

"To  the  wide  fountain  of  liquid  light,  the 

ethereal  sun,  steadily  fertilizes  the  heavens 

with  new  heat,  and  supplies  a  continuous 

store  of  fresh  light." 

Just  so  the  soul  variously  and  imperceptibly 
darts  out  her  passions. 

Artabanus  coming  by  surprise  once  upon 
his  nephew  Xerxes,  chid  him  for  the  sudden 
alteration  of  his  countenance.  He  was  con- 
sidering the  immeasurable  greatness  of  his 


256  MONTAIGNE 

forces  passing  over  the  Hellespont  for  the 
Grecian  expedition:  he  was  first  seized  with 
a  palpitation  of  joy,  to  see  so  many  millions 
of  men  under  his  command,  and  this  appeared 
in  the  gaiety  of  his  looks:  but  his  thoughts 
at  the  same  instant  suggesting  to  him  that  of 
so  many  lives,  within  a  century  at  most,  there 
would  not  be  one  left,  he  presently  knit  his 
brows  and  grew  sad,  even  to  tears. 

We  have  resolutely  pursued  the  revenge  of 
an  injury  received,  and  been  sensible  of  a 
singular  contentment  for  the  victory;  but  we 
shall  weep  notwithstanding.  'Tis  not  for  the 
victory,  though,  that  we  shall  weep:  there  is 
nothing  altered  in  that:  but  the  soul  looks 
upon  things  with  another  eye  and  represents 
them  to  itself  with  another  kind  of  face;  for 
everything  has  many  faces  and  several 
aspects. 

Relations,  old  acquaintances,  and  friend- 
ships, possess  our  imaginations  and  make 
them  tender  for  the  time,  according  to  their 
condition;  but  the  turn  is  so  quick,  that  'tis 
gone  in  a  moment: — 

"Nothing  therefore  seems  to  be  done  in  so 


MONTAIGNE  257 

swift  a  manner  than  if  the  mind  proposes  it 
to  be  done,  and  itself  begins.  It  is  more 
active  than  anything  which  we  see  in 
nature ; ' ' 

and  therefore,  if  we  would  make  one  con- 
tinued thing  of  all  this  succession  of  pas- 
sions, we  deceive  ourselves.  When  Timoleon 
laments  the  murder  he  had  committed  upon 
so  mature  and  generous  deliberation,  he  does 
not  lament  the  liberty  restored  to  his  country, 
he  does  not  lament  the  tyrant ;  but  he  laments 
his  brother:  one  part  of  his  duty  is  per- 
formed ;  let  us  give  him  leave  to  perform  the 
other. 


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COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

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